Dr. Adam Zeman is a professor at the University of Exeter in England who specializes in cognitive and behavioral neurology and has an extensive background in the science and philosophy of consciousness.
As of 2023, Zeman has been closely researching and studying people’s inability to visualize for nearly two decades. He was first made aware of this rarity when he learned of a 65 year-old man who lost his ability to visualize after undergoing an operation on his arteries.
In 2010, Dr. Zeman and a team of scientists at Exeter conducted a study on the man, dubbed MX, in order to research why he may have lost his mind’s eye. MX was a retired surveyor, who loved to fall asleep by visualizing building structures and loved ones. But after his procedure, he claimed to have lost the ability to visualize, especially while reading or thinking of recent places he’d visited.
When asked to visualize something, there is a certain portion of the brain that is generally most activated. During Zeman’s 2010 study, those in the control group activated that same part of the brain, while that portion of MX’s brain was less activated. This leads to the conclusion that it’s likely for those with aphantasia to be using a different part of the brain when mentally recalling or creating something.
Prior to Zeman’s research with MX, the only major study on the topic was done in 1880 by Sir Francis Galton. He reported that 12 of 100 men could not imagine their breakfast table, and thought “mental imagery” wasn’t meant literally. That being said, to this day little is factually known about the subject, so Zeman decided the importance of further studying what he called a “neglected phenomenon.”
In 2015, Zeman conducted a second major study on the phenomenon with 21 participants who all claimed to lack visualization since birth, and a control group of 121 people who could visualize well. Most of the participants claimed that they became aware of their visualization deficit during their teens or early twenties by reading about it or through conversations with those that can visualize.
Some of the most interesting results to come from that study were that 9 of the participants had a difficult time voluntarily creating a visual image, but 12 had the complete inability to do so. However, 10 of them claimed to experience involuntary flashes of imagery and 17 reported the ability to dream visually.
That same year, with the help of his colleagues at Edinburgh, Zeman coined the inability to visualize as “aphantasia,” which combines the Greek word “a” meaning “without” and “phantasia” meaning “imagination.”
Zeman’s research has been the driving force in learning more about aphantasia, leading to the few factual things we do know about the rare occurrence. The widespread attention and media coverage on the subject led to over ten-thousand people directly contacting him to help further his research.
Zeman is still conducting this research through a study done at Exeter called “The Eye’s Mind.” On his profile on the university website, Zeman encourages those without a visual imagination to reach out to further their research. More information about this ongoing study can be found here: https://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/eyesmind/get-in-touch/
In April of 2019, the students and professors behind The Eye’s Mind created the first ever international conference for people with “extreme imagination.” Also featured at the exhibit was work done by aphantasic and hyperphantasic artists, celebrating the diversity of art between those with and without strong visualization abilities.
The Aphantasia Network: https://aphantasia.com/
Thomas Ebeyer is one of the 21 aphants that Dr. Zeman studied in 2015. Since then, Ebeyer has created a website called The Aphantasia Network, where aphants and researchers can come together to learn more about the condition from each others’ experiences and findings.
Most of the website is free to read articles and discussions about aphantasia, as well as to watch recordings of community events. There are also membership options that give access to community events, unlock the ability to add to the discussions, and the opportunity to participate in calculated surveys and assessments.