<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[nopictureneeded]]></title><description><![CDATA[Understanding Aphantasia Together]]></description><link>https://www.nopictureneeded.com/blog</link><generator>RSS for Node</generator><lastBuildDate>Mon, 11 May 2026 03:49:37 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://www.nopictureneeded.com/blog-feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title><![CDATA[Start Here]]></title><description><![CDATA[This site exists because of observation and research. Many of the posts here are built on a study, a book, a podcast, or a paper that added something to my understanding of aphantasia. Click here to get to the list of all the sources The link above opens a Google Sheet with every blog post covered on this site. Each row has the title, what was found, who wrote it, and a direct link to the post. You can sort by topic or filter by type of source to find what is most relevant to you. New rows...]]></description><link>https://www.nopictureneeded.com/post/start-here</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fa7e2bb27e981e27c845c3</guid><pubDate>Tue, 05 May 2026 23:37:28 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/6439b94ed3ca4cb8a56a79471c388fce.png/v1/fit/w_385,h_345,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Paul Bogush</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Who You Are Is Not Stored in the Past]]></title><description><![CDATA[Metacognition and Self-Awareness: Neural and Cognitive Mechanisms in Brain Ageing and Alzheimer's Disease Youssef Bellaali. Doctoral Thesis, Université catholique de Louvain. 2026 I want to be upfront about this post. This post is different from the others on this site. I am not summarizing a study about aphantasia. It’s basically what happened in my head when I was reading excerpts from a doctoral thesis about Alzheimer's disease and brain aging. This paper came to my inbox via a google...]]></description><link>https://www.nopictureneeded.com/post/who-you-are-is-not-stored-in-the-past</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a0085f60cf45a42cca7eff4</guid><pubDate>Sun, 10 May 2026 13:21:50 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Paul Bogush</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Your Brain Treats Images Like Reality]]></title><description><![CDATA[Mental Imagery and Emotion: A Special Relationship? Emily A. Holmes and Andrew Mathews. Emotion. American Psychological Association. 2005. This paper was published ten years before aphantasia had a name. Holmes and Mathews were the first to prove with hard data what therapists had assumed for decades, that imagining something and thinking about it verbally are not the same thing emotionally. If you want to understand why a person with aphantasia responds differently to fear, to music, to...]]></description><link>https://www.nopictureneeded.com/post/your-brain-treats-images-like-reality</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a007ae5ecab901137567278</guid><pubDate>Sun, 10 May 2026 12:38:06 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Paul Bogush</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Experience of Music in Aphantasia: Emotion, Reward, and Everyday Functions.]]></title><description><![CDATA[Sarah Hashim, Claudia Pulcini, Mats B. Küssner, and Diana Omigie. Music and Science. 2023. The Question Visual imagery is one of the ways music makes us feel things. If you cannot generate that imagery, does music lose some of its emotional pull? Does it change how much you enjoy it? Does it change your ability to hear emotion in it? Researchers set out to find what parts of the music experience shift when visual imagery is absent, and what stays exactly the same. The Discovery In the first...]]></description><link>https://www.nopictureneeded.com/post/the-experience-of-music-in-aphantasia-emotion-reward-and-everyday-functions</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a007893ecab901137566cac</guid><pubDate>Sun, 10 May 2026 12:26:16 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Paul Bogush</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Scared in the Body, Not Just the Mind]]></title><description><![CDATA[The Critical Role of Mental Imagery in Human Emotion: Insights from Fear-Based Imagery and Aphantasia Marcus Wicken, Rebecca Keogh, and Joel Pearson. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 2021. The Question Mental imagery is supposed to be an emotional amplifier. When you read a scary story, your brain simulates the scene and your body reacts. But what happens when someone cannot generate that visual simulation at all? This study asked whether people with aphantasia would show the same physical...]]></description><link>https://www.nopictureneeded.com/post/scared-in-the-body-not-just-the-mind</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a0077dcecab901137566b1e</guid><pubDate>Sun, 10 May 2026 12:20:25 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Paul Bogush</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[A cognitive profile of multi-sensory imagery, memory and dreaming in aphantasia]]></title><description><![CDATA[Dawes, Keogh, Andrillon &#38; Pearson — Scientific Reports, 2020 The Quest Researchers already knew aphantasia meant no voluntary visual imagery. What they didn't know was how far that absence extended into other parts of cognition. This study set out to map the full cognitive profile of aphantasia across memory, dreaming, sensory imagery, trauma response, and spatial ability, with 267 aphantasic participants and two independent control groups. The Discovery Aphantasic participants reported...]]></description><link>https://www.nopictureneeded.com/post/a-cognitive-profile-of-multi-sensory-imagery-memory-and-dreaming-in-aphantasia</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fbc97e5caf4ed272c0baaf</guid><pubDate>Wed, 06 May 2026 23:07:36 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/e5bcce_1ee5785169744e09aee1b5be0ba7aeae~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_900,h_900,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Paul Bogush</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[SCIENTISTS DISCOVER WOMAN LIVING IN REMOTE VILLAGE, THRIVING WITHOUT MENTAL IMAGERY OF ANY KIND]]></title><description><![CDATA[Expedition team confirms subject located on Bleecker Street. "We came as fast as we could." NEW YORK, NY -- After months of following fragments of  data across one continent, a team of cognitive researchers announced Tuesday that they had successfully located and made contact with a woman living in an village community who appears to be functioning at full human capacity despite possessing absolutely no mental imagery whatsoever. She lives in Greenwich Village and there is a Duane Reade on...]]></description><link>https://www.nopictureneeded.com/post/scientists-discover-woman-living-in-remote-village-thriving-without-mental-imagery-of-any-kind</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fb946f5caf4ed272c05f25</guid><pubDate>Wed, 06 May 2026 19:35:32 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/e5bcce_162c32fb885f442ba4c3949ae710bf73~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_900,h_900,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Paul Bogush</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[NEW DISORDER IDENTIFIED IN MILLIONS WHO REPORTEDLY "SEE THINGS" INSIDE THEIR OWN HEADS]]></title><description><![CDATA[DSM-6 entry 302.77 added amid growing concern over condition affecting workplace performance, personal relationships, and lunch Spartan, OH -- A previously unclassified neurological condition in which sufferers experience persistent, involuntary visual imagery generated entirely within their own minds was formally recognized this week following what experts are calling a landmark accidental discovery. The condition, now classified as Involuntary Mental Imagery Disorder, or IMID, was first...]]></description><link>https://www.nopictureneeded.com/post/new-disorder-identified-in-millions-who-reportedly-see-things-inside-their-own-heads</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fb95f0b27e981e27ca66e6</guid><pubDate>Wed, 06 May 2026 19:35:17 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/e5bcce_162c32fb885f442ba4c3949ae710bf73~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_900,h_900,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Paul Bogush</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Metacognitive Awareness and the Subjective Experience of Remembering in Aphantasia]]></title><description><![CDATA[Siena &#38; Simons — Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2024 This Cambridge study tested whether people with aphantasia have actual memory deficits or whether they just think they do. Twenty people with aphantasia and 27 controls completed a 3D virtual environment task where they had to remember the color and location of objects. Both objective accuracy and subjective sense of how vivid the memory felt were measured separately. Here is what they found, and it is worth sitting with for a moment....]]></description><link>https://www.nopictureneeded.com/post/metacognitive-awareness-and-the-subjective-experience-of-remembering-in-aphantasia</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fa6aa6438dc58e2c8cf6d4</guid><pubDate>Tue, 05 May 2026 22:12:01 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/e5bcce_1ee5785169744e09aee1b5be0ba7aeae~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_900,h_900,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Paul Bogush</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Role of Visual Imagery in Story Reading: Evidence from Aphantasia]]></title><description><![CDATA[Speed, Eekhof &#38; Mak — Consciousness and Cognition, 2024 This study asked a simple question. Does not having a visual mind's eye change how you experience a story? Researchers had 47 people with aphantasia and 51 controls read the same short story, then measured how engaged, absorbed, and emotionally moved they were. Worth knowing before you read the results. The participants with aphantasia were recruited through Facebook and Reddit aphantasia communities, with an average age of 43. These are...]]></description><link>https://www.nopictureneeded.com/post/the-role-of-visual-imagery-in-story-reading-evidence-from-aphantasia</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fa69f02528aeae01480d14</guid><pubDate>Tue, 05 May 2026 22:08:52 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/e5bcce_1ee5785169744e09aee1b5be0ba7aeae~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_900,h_900,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Paul Bogush</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Impact of Aphantasia on Mental Healthcare Experiences]]></title><description><![CDATA[Mawtus, Renwick, Thomas &#38; Reeder — Collabra: Psychology, 2024 This study looked at how not having a visual mind's eye affects whether people with aphantasia get accurate diagnoses and helpful treatment. Researchers surveyed over 2,800 people and did in-depth interviews with 22 of them. They specifically looked at how well common therapies like CBT work for people who can't visualize. People with aphantasia experience mental health conditions just as often as everyone else, but their symptoms...]]></description><link>https://www.nopictureneeded.com/post/the-impact-of-aphantasia-on-mental-healthcare-experiences</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69fa695a438dc58e2c8cf431</guid><pubDate>Tue, 05 May 2026 22:05:37 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/e5bcce_1ee5785169744e09aee1b5be0ba7aeae~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_900,h_900,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Paul Bogush</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Imagination vs Creativity]]></title><description><![CDATA[People tell those with aphantasia they have no imagination.They are wrong. They just can't separate the thinking from the seeing. The word "imagination" is broken. It is being used to describe two different things. One is the ability to handle data, to make connections, and build concepts. The other is just a visual feedback loop. If you have aphantasia, you don't have the video to replay. You still have the data. In cognitive science, imagination is usually defined as mentally running events...]]></description><link>https://www.nopictureneeded.com/post/imagination-vs-creativity</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69f786d07b1c42fb24f86e6c</guid><pubDate>Sun, 03 May 2026 17:35:31 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/e5bcce_c64aff090ea445f794794bded04c53ba~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_900,h_900,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Paul Bogush</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[What Happens in a Mind That Can't 'See' Mental Images]]></title><description><![CDATA[Yasemin Saplakoglu (2024). Feature article, Quanta Magazine. This is a long-form science piece from Quanta Magazine that does a really nice job of introducing aphantasia to a general audience without dumbing it down. It follows several researchers who stumbled into the field, including a vision scientist who discovered her own aphantasia mid-seminar, and traces how the science has evolved from simply proving the condition exists to trying to understand the brain differences behind it. It also...]]></description><link>https://www.nopictureneeded.com/post/what-happens-in-a-mind-that-can-t-see-mental-images</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69f752975caf4ed272b7867c</guid><pubDate>Sun, 03 May 2026 13:52:28 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/e5bcce_8aaa70b782264d789df84c56b2bb2077~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_900,h_900,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Paul Bogush</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Epiphenomenal Qualia]]></title><description><![CDATA[Frank Jackson (1982). Philosophical Quarterly, 32, 127-136 I'm not saying that people with aphantasia won't enjoy this philosophical work, I am saying I am including it more specifically for all the folks who are visualizers. And if you can't make it past the first couple of sentences, at least skip to the last one. This is the paper that introduced Mary the color scientist, one of the most famous thought experiments in philosophy of mind. Mary knows everything there is to know about the...]]></description><link>https://www.nopictureneeded.com/post/epiphenomenal-qualia</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69f7504b7b1c42fb24f7ffc7</guid><pubDate>Sun, 03 May 2026 13:43:22 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/e5bcce_c7dbedeaea0349a493f7ef14580482b9~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_900,h_900,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Paul Bogush</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Task Evoked EEG Reveals Neural Processing Differences in Aphantasia]]></title><description><![CDATA[Boere et al. (2025). Peer-reviewed paper, Scientific Reports, Universities of Victoria and Glasgow This is the first study to hook up a group of people with aphantasia to an EEG and actually watch their brains work during attention and memory tasks. Sixty-two people with aphantasia, fifty-nine without, doing the same cognitive tasks while brain activity was recorded in real time. The question was whether the brains would look different even when the performance looked the same. They do....]]></description><link>https://www.nopictureneeded.com/post/task-evoked-eeg-reveals-neural-processing-differences-in-aphantasia</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69f74bfa7b1c42fb24f7f78b</guid><pubDate>Sun, 03 May 2026 13:24:41 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/e5bcce_1ee5785169744e09aee1b5be0ba7aeae~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_900,h_900,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Paul Bogush</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Brain Damage That Causes Aphantasia All Points to the Same Spot]]></title><description><![CDATA[Kutsche, Howard, Palacin, Drew, Michel, Cohen, Fox &#38; Kletenik (2026). Preprint accepted in Cortex, Harvard Medical School / Brigham and Women's Hospital This one is a bit of a detective story. Researchers found 12 documented cases where people lost their visual imagery after a brain injury, strokes mostly, and then mapped exactly where in the brain the damage was. The lesions were all over the place. Different locations, different patients. But when they looked at what all those locations had...]]></description><link>https://www.nopictureneeded.com/post/brain-damage-that-causes-aphantasia-all-points-to-the-same-spot</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69f749ec6d919e5ce86a89b3</guid><pubDate>Sun, 03 May 2026 13:14:23 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/e5bcce_1ee5785169744e09aee1b5be0ba7aeae~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_900,h_900,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Paul Bogush</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Connections Between Learning Arithmetic and Object Visual Imagery Ability in Elementary School]]></title><description><![CDATA[Connections Between Learning Arithmetic and Object Visual Imagery Ability in Elementary School This one asks a question that will feel very familiar if you've ever watched a kid struggle with multiplication tables and wondered if something else was going on. Gulyás looks at whether students with aphantasia have more trouble memorizing times tables, specifically because so many teaching methods tell kids to "picture it in your head." The research is honest about its limits.  It's a...]]></description><link>https://www.nopictureneeded.com/post/connections-between-learning-arithmetic-and-object-visual-imagery-ability-in-elementary-school</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69f64bccedf5696920d52f3c</guid><pubDate>Sat, 02 May 2026 19:11:24 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/e5bcce_1ee5785169744e09aee1b5be0ba7aeae~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_900,h_900,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Paul Bogush</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[How Interoception and the Insula Shape Mental Imagery and Aphantasia]]></title><description><![CDATA[Silvanto &#38; Nagai (2025) -- peer-reviewed paper, Brain Topography This one takes a left turn from the usual "visual cortex" explanation of aphantasia and asks whether the real action is happening somewhere else entirely -- in the part of the brain that reads your body's internal signals. Interoception is your sense of what's going on inside you, heartbeat, breath, gut feelings, and this paper argues it plays a much bigger role in mental imagery than anyone realized. The researchers propose...]]></description><link>https://www.nopictureneeded.com/post/how-interoception-and-the-insula-shape-mental-imagery-and-aphantasia</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69f649d57b1c42fb24f5ff6f</guid><pubDate>Sat, 02 May 2026 19:02:39 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/e5bcce_1ee5785169744e09aee1b5be0ba7aeae~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_900,h_900,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Paul Bogush</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness]]></title><description><![CDATA[David Chalmers (1995) -- academic philosophy paper, Journal of Consciousness Studies This is the paper that gave us the phrase "the hard problem of consciousness." Chalmers basically asks why any physical process in the brain produces the feeling of experience at all. Not just how we process information, but why it feels like something to be us. If you have aphantasia or SDAM, this paper is quietly personal even though Chalmers never mentions either. He's asking exactly the question your...]]></description><link>https://www.nopictureneeded.com/post/facing-up-to-the-problem-of-consciousness</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69f646b87b1c42fb24f5f974</guid><pubDate>Sat, 02 May 2026 18:49:13 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/e5bcce_c7dbedeaea0349a493f7ef14580482b9~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_900,h_900,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Paul Bogush</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Unseen Minds: A Therapist's Guide to Multisensory Aphantasia and Invisible Cognitive Differences]]></title><description><![CDATA[Unseen Minds: A Therapist's Guide to Multisensory Aphantasia and Invisible Cognitive Differences Sassy Smith (2025) -- book Sassy Smith lives with aphantasia, SDAM, and three other invisible cognitive differences, and she got so tired of being misunderstood in therapy that she wrote the book on it. This one is aimed at therapists but honestly reads like a field guide for anyone working with people whose minds don't follow the expected script. Teachers, take note. The book walks through what...]]></description><link>https://www.nopictureneeded.com/post/unseen-minds-a-therapist-s-guide-to-multisensory-aphantasia-and-invisible-cognitive-differences</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69f644a2ddf80d7e38c8ae49</guid><pubDate>Sat, 02 May 2026 18:41:59 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/e5bcce_e3c0bafb5c5a4845bea9e1b722ec6f87~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_900,h_900,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Paul Bogush</dc:creator></item></channel></rss>