Aphantasia and Memory Training

Aphantasia refers to an inability to mentally pictures visual images.

Many people in the forum wonder whether aphantasia affects memory or interferes with the ability to practice memory techniques.

The short answer is that aphantasia doesn’t prevent people from using memory techniques at an advanced level.

If you can remember how to walk from one point to another and remember things that happened along the way, you can use the memory palace technique.

Here is one community member with aphantasia who can perform feats like memorizing 30 random digits in 4 seconds using memory techniques.

Interesting Facts about Aphantasia

There was an interesting study from 2020 that found some interesting information about aphantasia.

“We found that aphantasia isn’t just associated with absent visual imagery, but also with a widespread pattern of changes to other important cognitive processes,” he says.

“People with aphantasia reported a reduced ability to remember the past, imagine the future, and even dream.”

Study participants completed a series of questionnaires on topics like imagery strength and memory. The results were compared with responses from 400 people spread across two independent control groups.

For example, participants were asked to remember a scene from their life and rate the vividness using a five-point scale, with one indicating “No image at all, I only ‘know’ that I am recalling the memory”, and five indicating “Perfectly clear and as vivid as normal vision”.

“Our data revealed an extended cognitive ‘fingerprint’ of aphantasia characterised by changes to imagery, memory, and dreaming,” says Mr Dawes.

“We’re only just starting to learn how radically different the internal worlds of those without imagery are.”

It also found that

26 per cent of aphantasic study participants reported a broader lack of multi-sensory imagery – including imagining sound, touch, motion, taste, smell and emotion

and

spatial imagery – the ability to imagine distance or locational relationship between things – was the only form of sensory imagery that had no significant changes across aphantasics and people who could visualise.

You can read the study here: A cognitive profile of multi-sensory imagery, memory and dreaming in aphantasia.

Tests for Aphantasia

There was an interesting experiment done in 2022 to test pupil responses in people with aphantasia. It appeared to confirm the existence of the condition.

Pupils of the eye contract in bright light and expand in darkness. This effect also happens to most people when they just imagine light and darkness. Researchers found that the amount of dilation and constriction depended on the vividness of a person’s mental images. The researchers also found that the pupil response didn’t happen in people with aphantasia.

Here, we utilized both subjective and objective measures of visual imagery ability and show that, within the same individual, greater pupillary light responses during imagery are associated with reports of stronger and more vivid imagery. We then used this task to compare imagery strength between individuals and test the veracity of the self-reported lack of imagery in aphantasia.

We show that while aphantasic individuals display pupil contraction to perceptual brightness and dilation with effort (cognitive load), they do not show any evidence of pupil change in response to attempts at imagery – providing the first objective physiological evidence confirming the existence of aphantasia.

Memory Palaces with Aphantasia

A user on Reddit offered some tips for using memory palaces with aphantasia:

Here are some tricks that I’ve found work for me when using the Method of Loci.

1. Lean into the spatial aspects of the Method of Loci. Think of the spatial relation of rooms, areas, and the “props” to each other rather than the actual minute details of them. In other words, think of your journeys as the bare-bones types of room layout maps you look at when looking for a new apartment - only the essential spatial information is captured.
2. You need to make information you want to memorize a unique data point to remember by exaggerating the “image”. If you want to remember a grocery list, you don’t simply place a milk cartoon down on your bed, you image that the bed and mattress has completely soaked though with milk. That the living room has a stack of apples going from floor to ceiling, etc.
3. Spaced repetition really is the ultimate technique to ensure the information “sticks”.

Another point I’d like to make is that I don’t use the Method of Loci to memorize important things long-term. In fact, I’ve only ever used it to memorize cards decks and a few simple temporary lists. If you use the method to memorize information long-term, you’re using up that journey indefinitely to store that information. I’m not sacrificing my childhood home as a potential journey to memorize aspects of my textbooks. If I wanted to do that, I’d draw a map of a fictional palace (again, like a simple apartment map) and place the information there. The more detail-heavy the information you want to memorize, the weaker the Method of Loci is unless you seriously chunk up and divide that information before memorizing it. Example: you can’t realistically use the Method of Loci to memorize every word of a speech, but it’s fantastic for memorizing each point you want to make in your speech in sequence.

And:

From my own experience using mind journeys, I wouldn’t necessarily bother populating rooms with lots of furniture and the like. Even though I exclusively use places I know well in the real world for my mnemonics, I only ever use one or two objects in the room to memorize things (ex. the tub or toilet in the bathroom; the bed or the painting she made in my sister’s room).

I’ve tried creating my own unique mental spaces filled with stuff, but I found it exhausting. Curious to hear how it goes for you!

Lynne Kelly also mentioned that memory palaces based on real locations might work better than virtual palaces for people with aphantasia:

My concern for the imaginary palace would be for students with aphantasia - no visual imagery. It is why I always use physical palaces. That would be very few of your students, but you will have them. I would suggest checking with students how well they can remember imaginary palaces, and even let them decide which would be better - although a palace for the whole class would work best because of the group encoding.

Give the technique a try, and let us know in the forum if you have any tips!

Discussions about Aphantasia and Memory

Below are some additional discussions about aphantasia and memory.

• Memory Palace and Aphantasia
• Test for Aphantasia (POLL)
• I believe I may have Aphantasia (lack of ability to visualize)
• Aphantasia Explained
• How to review your memory palace if you have Aphantasia?
• I would like help with first steps in Visualization
• I can’t visualize images in my mind
• How to improve visualization and mental imagery?
• Can see mental images only for seconds
• Using the Journey method when you don’t have any imagination
• Techniques for non mental imagers?

Here’s a test to experiment with: close your eyes and try to picture the dog below. Can you visualize it in your mind? Could you draw it from memory? If not, and you think you might have aphantasia, we would love to hear more about your experiences in our forum. Tag your post with #aphantasia so other people looking for information about aphantasia can find it.

Further Reading

• When the Mind’s Eye Is Blind (Scientific American)

You might also be interested in these pages:

• Eidetic Memory vs. Photographic Memory: Do They Exist?
• How to Build a Memory Palace
• Learn the Major System
• Synesthesia and Memory