Aphantasia as imagery blindsight

Matthias Michel, Ned Block, Jorge Morales, Hakwan Lau

Abstract: This article argues that aphantasia—the lack of conscious visual imagery—may best be understood as a form of “imagery blindsight.” Contrary to views suggesting that aphantasics lack mental imagery altogether or suffer from general introspective deficits, the authors present behavioral and neural evidence indicating the presence of nonconscious imagistic representations in individuals with aphantasia. Drawing parallels with blindsight, where visual information is processed without conscious awareness, the authors propose that aphantasics may possess functional imagery that lacks phenomenal consciousness. They critically evaluate competing explanations and suggest that the diminished vividness in episodic memory and future thinking observed in aphantasics may result from reduced metacognitive access rather than true mnemonic deficits. The concept of “blank access”—cognitive access without imagery awareness—is introduced as a theoretical framework. The paper advocates for future research testing metacognitive and psychophysical dissociations in imagery, paralleling methods used in blindsight studies, to better understand the mechanisms underlying conscious visual imagery.