Thousands of people are only now realizing that when someone says they can “picture” something in their head, they mean it literally. This shocking discovery has led to the realization that they are completely missing this ability. You heard that right: for a huge number of people, the ability to conjure an image, a face, a scene, or a sunset, in the mind’s eye simply doesn’t exist, which is a condition that’s now been scientifically dubbed aphantasia.
This is blowing people’s minds, and as one artist, Isabel Nolan, who recently discovered her condition, put it: “There was an element of like—fuck! is the only way I can put it. Horrified and cheated. I still feel a bit cheated.” For those of us who can picture a friend’s face or a childhood bedroom when we close our eyes, it’s hard to imagine life without it. But for aphantasics, they’ve always just assumed that phrases like “seeing in your mind’s eye” were nothing more than a metaphor or colorful exaggeration, according to the New Yorker.
