When you live your entire life without a “mind’s eye,” it seems completely normal to visualize nothing when remembering people and places or imagining the future. People with “aphantasia” can’t mentally visualize things. A quick at-home test for aphantasia is called the red star or red apple test. Close your eyes and picture a red apple. How well can you see the apple visually on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the most vivid? Can you see its color, shape and the length of the stem? Is it a bit hazy, coming in and out of focus? Most people can see between 1 and 4, but for people with aphantasia, they see nothing — no fuzzy outline, no hint of any image at all. Overall, people with aphantasia don’t seem to have serious problems navigating their day-to-day lives. The good news is that people with aphantasia don’t have face blindness. They can recall faces without any problem at all; they just can’t visualize images. While some people have claimed they can train their way out of aphantasia, the jury is still out on whether that works or not. The bottom line is some people think in pictures, and some don’t.
