Your Mind's Eye + Digital Organization 🧠
Aphantasia, Hyperphantasia, and how we imagine things differently
If I asked you to close your eyes and imagine you’re standing in a grassy field with a view of mountains in the distance…what do you conjure up in your mind (aka your “imagination” or your “mind’s eye”)?
If you felt instantly transported to that scene in full, vivid color — perhaps you could even smell the fresh mountain air, hear the birds, or feel the breeze in your hair — you are on the left end of the Imagination Spectrum (a three or perhaps a four).
If you’re sitting here thinking “What the hell is she talking about?” or focusing more on the energy or “vibe” of standing in a grassy field, or perhaps seeing vague shapes or outlines — well then, you’re more on the right side of the Imagination Spectrum (a two or perhaps a one).
It’s interesting, right? And maybe you’ve gone your entire life not realizing that this can vary person to person.
Seeing absolutely nothing is known as “aphantasia”, while seeing a vivid, life-like image inside your own mind is known as “hyperphantasia”.
It’s helpful to understand that this really is a spectrum, and that there aren’t necessarily just four “categories” — you could fall along it at a multitude of points.
In my head (ha, can you guess where I fall?) I picture a spectrum that looks a bit more like this:
This is one of the many ways that neurodiversity presents itself, and it’s truly fascinating. While most of us — around 80% or so — will land in the middle of the spectrum, a handful of us lie on the outskirts, with small percentages being on the very far ends.
There’s also some evidence that this can change throughout your life — simply through experience and changes to your brain, or specific events like brain trauma, a COVID infection (some people stopped seeing images after being infected with COVID), or trying psychedelics like psilocybin (some aphantasics report being able to see images long after psilocybin treatment).
Types of Imagination
Visual imagination isn’t the only type of imagination humans have. Six types of imagination have been identified, and we can each be a unique blend of them:
🖼 Visual Imagination – The ability to imagine pictures in your mind without actually seeing them with your eyes.
👂🏻 Auditory Imagination – The ability to imagine sound in your mind without actually hearing with your ears.
👃🏻 Olfactory Imagination – The ability to imagine smells in your mind without actually smelling with your nose.
👅 Gustatory Imagination – The ability to imagine tastes in your mind without actually tasting with your tongue.
💆🏻♀️ Tactile Imagination – The ability to imagine sensations in your mind without actually feeling with your body.
🚶🏻♀️ Motor Imagination – The ability to imagine movements in your mind without actually moving with your body.
So while someone with aphantasia might have limited Visual Imagination, it doesn’t mean that they will have limited sense in all six of their sensory imaginations.
Likewise, someone with hyperphantasia might not enjoy the same vivid sense in all the other areas.
When you consider all the variations of heightened or reduced imagination each person is capable of, that spectrum above becomes even more complex — in a really wonderful way!
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Pros and Cons
One end of the spectrum is not better or superior to the other, even though our increasingly visual world might make it seem like hyperphantasics are at an advantage.
While research is limited, I personally like to think that just like many aspects of human diversity, we benefit from the existence of this spectrum.
For example, hyperphantasics (highly visual people) often report feeling physical and emotional reactions to seeing injustice or oppression. Not necessarily experiencing it themselves, but simply observing it happening to others.
This can make them feel visceral outrage, grief, and mental distress. It might have a profound impact on their mental health or take them a long time to get over.
And while this doesn’t mean that aphantasics are indifferent to injustice or suffering, they might be able to observe the situation more logically and more easily take action.
When I speak to aphantasics they often describe their “mind’s eye” as the ability to feel the energy, presence, or “vibe”, rather than any sort of discernable visual. To me, that always sounds so efficient. In a world where we are constantly trying to increase our mental bandwidth, it seems advantageous not to take up precious resources conjuring up mental images if you don’t have to.
Over the course of human history, it’s easy to see how it would have been not just beneficial but necessary for this spectrum of people to exist in our families, tribes, and communities.
Digital Organization
I first became aware of the existence of this spectrum two years ago when I launched my first online course. I opened the first lesson with my favorite visualization exercise and out of the 200 students enrolled, two reached out me utterly perplexed about how they’d do this.
And that…confused me.
A few Google Searches and Reddit Threads later I found myself deep in the world of the Imagination Spectrum, and what I’ve learned has helped shape the work I do.
What I’ve discovered is that our “Mind’s Eye” impacts a lot — including how we interact with digital information and our ability to organize or navigate it. With a larger sample size, I think I might be able to draw helpful conclusions about this connection.
So I’m asking for your help! I’ve put together a short, anonymous questionnaire (it should take a few minutes to complete!) that will help me understand where you are at on the spectrum, and how you interact with digital information. You can take it here:
I would be super appreciative of your participation and would also love if you’d share this with your co-workers, spouses, friends, etc. The more people who complete it, the more helpful it will be.
I will, of course, share the results + conclusions in a future post and am really excited to see what we might learn from this.
💬 Is the Imagination Spectrum something you were aware of? Was anything surprising to you? Do you think this has had any interesting impacts on your life?