Aphantasia and the Mechanisms of Visual Mental Imagery.
Annual review of vision science May 6, 2026 Paolo Bartolomeo
Visual mental imagery—the ability to see with the mind's eye—ranges from vivid visualization to aphantasia, a reported lack of imagery. Evidence from patients and brain scans challenges the old idea that imagery depends on the early visual cortex. Instead, imagery arises from interactions among high-level visual regions in the ventral temporal cortex, frontoparietal control networks, and a left-lateralized fusiform imagery node, which likely bridges visual and semantic information. A taxonomy distinguishing neurological, psychogenic, and congenital aphantasia clarifies the phenomenon's heterogeneity. Congenital aphantasia appears to reflect impaired access to visual representations rather than their absence. Recent findings support a revised neural model where conscious visualization emerges from dynamic network coordination, with implications for consciousness theories and clinical interventions.