Loren N. Bouyer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, an

‘A blind and deaf mind’: what it’s like to have no visual imagination or inner voice

submited by

Style Pass

2024-04-02 07:00:03

Loren N. Bouyer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

One of the authors, Loren Bouyer, cannot do any of these things. To Loren the left-hand image looks like a jumble of two-dimensional shapes, and she can only see a mop on the right.

Loren cannot imagine audio or visual sensations, or hear an inner voice when she reads. She has a condition we describe as “deep aphantasia” in a new paper in Frontiers in Psychology.

Aphantasia is often described as “having a blind mind”. But often we cannot have other imagined experiences either. So an aphantasic might have a blind and a deaf mind, or a blind and a tasteless mind.

Most people can experience an inner voice when they think. You might only speak one language, so your inner voice will “speak” that language.