Adam Zeman

Visual aphantasia, the blank TV screen.

Aphantasia, a term first coined by Professor Adam Zeman in 2015 through his Mind's Eye project, describes a person's inability to voluntarily visualize images in the mind.

Strict visual aphantasia affects roughly one percent of the population, with hypophantasia, where they view faint outlines accounting for another three percent.

Neurologically, voluntary mental imagery relies on top-down executive control.

The default mode network is a core network of interacting brain regions that activates when we're not focused on the outside world, responsible for self-reflection, future simulation, and episodic memory retrieval.

Pioneered by memory researchers like Dr. Brian Levine and Professor Adam Zeman, neuroimaging demonstrates that without functional connectivity within this network to act as an internal visual simulation engine, autobiographical memories cannot be relived from a first-person perspective.

Strict aphantasia and SDAM are tightly bound through this shared neural architecture.

Why autism and ADHD intersect mechanically.