Aphantasia

My teacher keeps telling me to “picture this in your mind’s eye.” Well I can’t picture anything in my mind’s eye. She said, ‘pull up a picture of a dog in your brain.’ I tried. I know what a dog is when I see one but couldn’t see it or a cat or even the piano keyboard with my eyes closed. Is something wrong with me?”

Interesting question and I’m glad you asked. Aphantasia is a label for a lack of all mental imagery. Some brain can imagine things like the soft feeling of a kitten or the sound of thunder with lightning but there is no accompanying “picture” or “internal mental image” in their brain. This research is quite new and it reminds all of us, me included, that every brain is different. I don’t know if I was born knowing how to visualize and I wouldn’t say my brain is excellent at it because I cannot see a piece of music, close my eyes, and play the piano from the picture in my brain. My father did teach me to visualize at some level, however. More tomorrow.