What do you see when you try to picture an apple?

Adrià Voltà

Last December, I closed my eyes and tried to visualise a potoo. This tropical bird has a “round, kind of pill-shaped head”, my mental imagery coach described to me, and is covered with brown feathers. Its cartoonishly large mouth opens like a gaping smile to reveal a pink, fleshy colour, and its large irises can make its eyes seem entirely black.

Perhaps an image is appearing in your mind – a fuzzy outline of a bird’s body or a clear picture of its face. But I struggled to see anything. I have aphantasia, a phenomenon in which people don’t have a mind’s eye.

I had always known I wasn’t a visual thinker, but didn’t hear the term aphantasia until I was in my early 30s. I spent decades unaware that anyone actually saw images in their head. Since we don’t have access to each other’s minds , these internal differences often go unnoticed. But, as research on mental imagery has increased in recent years, so has media coverage .…