What is the Link Between Mental Imagery and Sensory Sensitivity? Insights from Aphantasia.

ABSTRACT: People with aphantasia have impoverished visual imagery so struggle to form mental pictures in the mind's eye. By testing people with and without aphantasia, we investigate the relationship between sensory imagery and sensory sensitivity (i.e., hyper- or hypo-reactivity to incoming signals through the sense organs). In Experiment 1 we first show that people with aphantasia report impaired imagery across multiple domains (e.g., olfactory, gustatory etc.) rather than simply vision. Importantly, we also show that imagery is related to sensory sensitivity: aphantasics reported not only lower imagery, but also lower sensory sensitivity. In Experiment 2, we showed a similar relationship between imagery and sensitivity in the general population. Finally, in Experiment 3 we found beh

SUBMITTER: Dance CJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8438787 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature