Well, how about this (via MeFi): a new survey study suggests links between aphantasia and autobiographical memory deficiencies.
“Most of us assume visual imagery is something everyone has, something fundamental to the way we see and move through the world. But what does having a ‘blind mind’ mean for the mental journeys we take every day when we imagine, remember, feel and dream?”
Mr Dawes was the lead author on a new aphantasia study, published overnight in Scientific Reports. It surveyed over 250 people who self-identified as having aphantasia, making it one of the largest studies on aphantasia yet.
“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.”
Interesting to me is Dawes’ note that this general lack of visualization impacts not just projection into the past but into the future as well—which I’ve been suggesting might be the case (links to blog search for aphantasia), because it appears to be so with me.
I’ve been wondering also about the issue of dreams, because I definitely dream in visuals despite being otherwise aphantasic; but I wonder now about other people’s general sensory experience of dreaming, and to what degree my own in fact is lacking by comparison.
The other write-up linked at MeFi notes other linkages which suggest to me now that there’s an entire range ways in which my cognitive sensory experience simply does not match nor mirror most everyone else’s.