Aphantasia, the inability to generate visual mental imagery while awake, poses a challenge to theories that claim dreams are essentially imaginative experiences. Recent studies show that most aphantasics still have rich visual dreams, contradicting the view that dreaming constitutively involves the kind of imagery aphantasics lack. The paper argues that this empirical finding can be reconciled if the imagination theory is revised to hold that dreams are inactive and involve non-voluntary forms of imagination, rather than the active imagery proposed by Jonathan Ichikawa. Further research is suggested to test this revised hypothesis.
People with major depression often describe a profound shift in their conscious experience, feeling as if they have entered a 'different world' detached from reality and others. This paper proposes that depression involves a departure from ordinary wakeful consciousness into a distinctive global state of consciousness similar to dreaming or the psychedelic state. The hypothesis is developed using research in consciousness science and has implications for understanding the neurobiology of depression and for psychedelic psychiatry. The account offers a conceptually well-motivated framework that can guide empirical investigation.