Advertisement
If it’s hard for you to remember faces of people from time to time, or occasionally forget how someone’s voice sounds, then you’re probably pretty normal.
But if you can’t remember anyone’s face, even people you love, and you have trouble recalling key memories on a regular basis, then you may have a condition called “aphantasia.”
Aphantasia is the name for a condition in which the person in question can’t visualize anything.
Most people can recall memories about all of their senses—sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch—with some vividness. Many cognitive scientists consider this visualization to be one of the most important parts of the human experience.
What happens when you visualize something, like the memory of a loved one who passed, is that different areas of your brain work to reconstruct a memory. Your parietal and frontal lobes organize the information, and the occipital and temporal lobes make the information into a visual experience for you.
Unfortunately, since there are so many parts of the brain at play here, it’s hard to pin down exactly what’s happening in the brain of someone with aphantasia.
Advertisement
Some people seen to always have had it, but some people experience brain damage only with the onset of a mood disorder or some kind of brain damage.
A recent survey done by Adam Zeman, a cognitive neurologist with the University of Exeter Medical School, found that many people don’t realize they have aphantasia until they’re made aware that other people can visualize what they cannot.
This survey, he’s found, can help people figure out if they have aphantasia, and he discovers that most people didn’t realize they had it until they were in their twenties.
Of course, none of his research is conclusive yet. He plans to attempt to find what causes this disorder. In the meantime, be grateful for the memories you have.
