Mental imagery can be advantageous, unnecessary and even clinically disruptive. With
methodological constraints now overcome, research has shown that visual imagery involves …

Conscious experiences involve subjective qualities, such as colours, sounds, smells and
emotions. In this Perspective, we argue that these subjective qualities can be understood in …

For most people, visual imagery is an innate feature of many of our internal experiences,
and appears to play a critical role in supporting core cognitive processes. Some individuals …

Visual imagery typically enables us to see absent items in the mind's eye. It plays a role in
memory, day-dreaming and creativity. Since coining the terms aphantasia and …

Although Galton recognized in the 1880s that some individuals lack visual imagery, this
phenomenon was mostly neglected over the following century. We recently coined the terms …

One proposed function of imagery is to make thoughts more emotionally evocative through
sensory simulation, which can be helpful both in planning for future events and in …

Visual mental imagery is the ability to create a quasi-perceptual visual picture in the mind's
eye. For people with the rare trait of aphantasia, this ability is entirely absent or markedly …

The pupillary light response is an important automatic physiological response which
optimizes light reaching the retina. Recent work has shown that the pupil also adjusts in …

Drawing is a cognitive tool that makes the invisible contents of mental life visible. Humans
use this tool to produce a remarkable variety of pictures, from realistic portraits to schematic …

Aphantasia describes the experience of individuals who self-report a lack of voluntary visual
imagery. It is not yet known whether individuals with aphantasia show deficits in cognitive …