Aphantasia 💭

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Aphantasia is the inability to create mental imagery.

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The community icon is a reference to this popular test for one's level of visualization vividness:

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Preprint: R-Squared Equal to One: Substituting a Hippocampal Asymmetry Metric for Subjective Measures of Visual Mental Imagery (davidfmarks.net)

submitted 2 months ago by BlueSerendipity8@jlai.lu to c/aphantasia@lemmy.world

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Scientists found a strong connection between the size differences in specific areas of the brain (the hippocampus) and how people scored on a visual imagery questionnaire

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[–] nichtsowichtig@feddit.org 0 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Can someone explain this what this means and why this is significant? It sounds fascinating

[–] BlueSerendipity8@jlai.lu 2 points 2 months ago (3 children)

The research reveals that individuals with aphantasia have more symmetrical hippocampal volumes. Marks highlights that neuroanatomical asymmetry significantly influences conscious visual mental experience. It also notes that researchers do not need to switch from the VVIQ to the new brain asymmetry measure, as both correlate almost perfectly, making the latter's costly MRI scans unnecessary.

[–] nichtsowichtig@feddit.org 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

thank you so much! To be honest I would love to have my aphantasia properly 'diagnosed' with some sort of brain scan.

[–] BlueSerendipity8@jlai.lu 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Mee too, while one of these two might be interesting to be evaluated:

Pupillary response: The pupillary light response as a physiological index of aphantasia, sensory and phenomenological imagery strength: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9018072/
Skin conductance: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33715433/
Binocular rivalry: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29175093/ (see also https://aphantasia.com/article/science/binocular-rivalry/ )

[–] nichtsowichtig@feddit.org 2 points 2 months ago

I have seen some of these studies! It's really cool. It's fun to think that maybe one day my neurodivergency may be proven neurologically. thanks for your insight!