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Speaking of Psychology

When your “mind’s eye” is blank: Understanding aphantasia, with Joel Pearson, PhD

Speaking of Psychology

Kim Mills

Science, Life Sciences, Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.5839 Ratings

🗓️ 28 January 2026

⏱️ 39 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

People with aphantasia can’t visualize images in their mind’s eye. Ask them to picture an apple and they see a blank screen. Aphantasia researcher Joel Pearson, PhD, discusses how scientists are developing new methods to measure aphantasia beyond self-reports; how aphantasia may affect people’s memory and emotions; the link between aphantasia and creativity; the opposite condition of hyperphantasia, or extraordinarily vivid mental imagery; and what these differences in our internal mental experiences can teach us about consciousness and neurodiversity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:30.7

Try to picture an apple.

0:32.7

For most people, that's easy.

0:35.0

The word conjures up an image in their minds eye of a round red fruit with a

0:39.1

brown stem, maybe a green leaf on the top. But for people with Afantasia, it's impossible. Trying to

0:46.5

picture an apple or anything else brings up nothing but essentially a blank screen. Today we're

0:53.1

going to talk with one of the world's leading experts on

0:55.6

Afantasia or the inability to visualize things in one's mind's eye about what scientists are

1:01.8

learning about this recently identified condition. What causes Afantasia? How common is it? How do you

1:08.8

reliably measure a person's inner experience like the ability to form

1:13.1

mental images? What effects might Afantasia have on people's lives, from memory to creativity

1:19.1

to mental health? And what can studying Afantasia tell us more broadly about how the human mind

1:25.7

works? Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association

1:32.9

that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life.

...

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