Designed for the present?

A Unifying Theory of Aphantasia: Aphantasia as the Inability to Disengage from the External Environment

Merlin Monzel & Reshanne R. Reeder, Neuropsychologia, 2026

Please note, at end of this post I add a bit of an assumption about the research clearly marked as such :)

The Question

The standard explanation for aphantasia is that the brain fails to generate mental images. These researchers think that explanation is incomplete. They propose a different question: what if the problem is not that the brain cannot turn images on, but that it cannot turn the outside world off?

Monzel and Reeder argue that aphantasia may not be best understood as a failure to generate mental images, but as a difficulty disengaging from external perceptual processing. In this framework, imagery requires suppressing competing sensory activity so internal representations can dominate consciousness. The paper does not present new experiments; instead, it synthesizes recent behavioral, neuroimaging, and computational findings to support a “stuck in the present” account of aphantasia. 

The Discovery

This paper does not present new experimental data. It pulls together findings from multiple recent studies to argue for a different way of understanding what aphantasia actually is.

The standard view holds that mental imagery works like running perception in reverse. The brain reactivates visual areas top-down and a mental image appears. Under that account, aphantasia should show reduced visual cortex activity because the reactivation is failing. But brain imaging studies have found the opposite. People with aphantasia show more visual cortex activity during imagery attempts, not less.

One study found that artificially reducing cortical excitability in the visual cortex using mild electrical stimulation actually increased imagery strength in typical imagers. That is a striking result. If imagery worked purely through activation, reducing cortical activity should weaken imagery, not strengthen it. The fact that it went the other way suggests something else is happening.

A second line of evidence involves the hippocampus. In typical imagers, there is strong negative connectivity between the hippocampus and the visual cortex during memory retrieval, meaning the hippocampus appears to suppress visual cortex activity. In people with aphantasia, that suppression is substantially reduced. The researchers interpret this as the brain failing to clear perceptual space for internally generated images rather than failing to generate the images themselves.

The Catch

This is a theoretical framework built on evidence from other studies, not a new experiment. The authors are proposing a model, not reporting a finding. The evidence they cite is real and peer-reviewed, but whether the suppression hypothesis fully explains aphantasia remains to be tested directly. The authors acknowledge several open questions, including whether disengagement failure is a cause or a consequence of aphantasia, and how much individual variation exists within the population.

The Insight

The reframe here is worth sitting with. If the core problem in aphantasia is difficulty disengaging from the external world rather than a failure to generate internal representations, it shifts what we think aphantasia actually costs. People with aphantasia may be especially anchored to what is directly in front of them, present-focused and perceptually grounded, not because something is broken but because the balance between inward and outward attention is calibrated differently. The guide describes students who work well with concrete, external information and struggle when tasks require going inward. This framework offers a possible brain-based explanation for exactly that pattern.

The One Thing to Remember

A person with aphantasia may not be failing to imagine. They may be especially good at staying locked onto the external world, and that lock may be difficult to release. For a teacher or parent, the practical implication is the same as the guide already suggests: give them something external to work with. The difference is that this framework helps explain why that works. It is not a workaround for a broken system. It may be exactly how the system is built.

The Connection

The guide describes people with aphantasia as filing cabinet thinkers who work from what is in front of them rather than from internal pictures. This paper offers a possible neurological account of why that is. The filing cabinet is not just a metaphor for a different cognitive style. It may reflect a brain that is genuinely more anchored to external input and less able to suppress it in favor of internally generated experience. That does not make the filing cabinet a lesser system. It makes it a different one, with its own strengths, built around what is real and present rather than what is imagined.

The Source

You can read the full paper by clicking here.

I want to add something here that goes a little beyond what the paper directly claims. If the core idea is that people with aphantasia are more anchored to the external world and less pulled away by internal imagery and simulation, that is not only a limitation with workarounds. It may reflect a different thought process with real strengths.

Typical imagers are often running a kind of internal movie, and that movie can amplify worry, trigger intrusive flashbacks, and pull attention away from what is actually in front of them. The paper's discussion of Tetris makes that concrete. Researchers used a visuospatial task right after traumatic footage specifically to interfere with the formation of intrusive visual memories. That works because vivid imagery can sometimes work against attention to the present moment. People with aphantasia may not need that kind of interruption, because their minds may already be less likely to build those visual loops.

The paper also points to findings showing reduced susceptibility to some higher-level visual illusions, which fits the idea that people with aphantasia rely more on what is actually in front of them than on what the brain expects to be there. That is not better perception in every sense. But it is a form of clarity that is less distorted by internal imagery. As a visualizer I cannot "imagine" being able to do that.

None of this is a direct claim from the paper, and the authors are not arguing that aphantasia is an advantage! A brain that stays closely tied to what is real, present, and immediately available is not a broken version of a visualizer brain. It may be a different design, with its own strengths.