As a cognitive neuroscientist, part of my research involves studying how the brain creates visual representations of the world—both the real world and the world that exists only in our imaginations: made up of memories, daydreams, or future plans. I’m interested in what David Chalmers calls the “hard problem of consciousness,” how brain activity leads to conscious, subjective experiences. Observing the brain as it perceives or creates mental imagery, I believe, can give us insight into the neurological functions that give rise to consciousness.
To do this kind of research, my colleagues and I put people in an fMRI machine (a specialized scanner that maps brain activity in real time) and ask them to—for example—look at a picture of an apple and then close their eyes and imagine the apple. By doing this, we’ve observed some interesting similarities and important distinctions between what happens in your brain while you are perceiving images in front of you versus what happens when you are creating images from scratch. But we’ve also run into a fascinating subset of people who cannot create mental imagery at all.
About 3 percent of the population has aphantasia, the lack of a so-called mind’s eye. When they close their eyes and imagine an apple, try as they might, they can’t. They may be able to conjure the sweet taste or smell of the fruit, or the feel of it in their hand, but the color and shape of an apple won’t materialize. Most people with aphantasia don’t know they have it, including, as it turned out, my own father and sister, who learned about this quirk of their brains from the kinds of dinner table conversations neuroscientists are wont to start.
The condition is not a disability but rather a different way of experiencing the world, and it can even have some benefits. For example, because people with aphantasia can’t visually imagine or conjure visual images of stressful or scary scenarios, they may have an easier time living in the moment. And while not necessarily protected from conditions such as PTSD, people with aphantasia may experience them differently given the absence of visual re-experiencing in flashbacks.
Still, some aphants, as many call themselves, feel pretty severe FOMO when they learn they lack an ability most people take for granted. “I’m so mad that other people literally see stuff,” writes one user in the Aphantasia subreddit. “There are times I have little pity parties when [I] think how much more enriched my imagination could be,” writes another. Some find the discovery positively devastating and wonder if it’s the reason for everything that’s gone wrong in their life.
But now, anecdotal evidence is emerging that there might be a way for those people to open their mind’s eye—perhaps even permanently—by taking psychedelics.
In 2018, researchers in Brazil published a case study of a 39-year-old man self-diagnosed with aphantasia who claimed that ayahuasca, a powerful psychedelic tea, allowed him to create mental imagery for the first time. The man reported that for much of his life, he could not conjure the images of objects or family members in his head. Similarly, his dreams could be emotional and visceral, but never visual. While on ayahuasca, however, he was able to clearly imagine his estranged father. “I was seeing visual imagery for the first time in my life as I laid there with my eyes closed,” he said.
Perhaps more remarkably, the man was able to see mental images long after his psychedelic experience had ended. “I can now bring forth faint pictures in my mind,” he told researchers. “When dreaming, I now see faint, quickly fading images.”
In a 2023 case study, a researcher at the University of Lyon in France describes the experience of a 34-year-old woman who had been living with aphantasia since childhood. After consuming psilocybin mushrooms, “it was the first time I had images in my mind,” she reported. While being aphantasic had never bothered her, playing with the size and color of those images made her realize her subjective reality had been “very limited compared to the reality of others.” Again, the effects of the psychedelics persisted many months after the drugs had worn off, although the imagery faded over time.
These case studies are echoed by anecdotes online, from aphants who claim that mushrooms, ketamine, and LSD have allowed them to see things “as real as photographs.”
What might explain this phenomenon?
There are a few theories, but the most likely explanation is that psychedelics alter signaling and connectivity in the brain, and that these changes may promote better communication among the visual cortex, memory, and executive areas, allowing the aphantasic brain to create imagery for the first time. Another possibility is that the psychedelic experience teaches the user what mental imagery is and how to generate it even after the trip is over.
The only way to understand the physiological mechanisms at play is to perform a controlled, randomized trial. Ideally, we would put the person with aphantasia in an fMRI machine before, during, and after a psychedelic dosing to observe the differences in their brain activity. For aphants who experience mental imagery while on psychedelics, we would be able to see that show up in the brain. Because we’d be comparing a brain that lacks conscious visual experience with the same brain as it gains one, we could begin to isolate which neural processes are necessary for that experience to arise, with implications for finally solving the hard problem of consciousness.
Unfortunately, we’re not quite ready to perform these experiments. Not only would these trials require significant funding, but they’d also pose some ethical problems for the researcher and potential health risks for the subjects.
Specifically, there’s concern that, especially for someone who’s never experienced it before, mental imagery could prove to be disorienting or even distressing. Have you ever been driving and had a brief flash of your car crashing into a light pole? Those of us who have been managing our internal imagery systems our whole lives know these jolting visions are just our brain asking, “what if?” But if you’ve never had a thought like this before, the experience might be traumatic. It might even put you in danger.
Additionally, if you’ve never been able to visualize your memories, there’s a chance you could mix up memories and daydreams. While I’ve had decades of experience differentiating between real memories and my own mental imagery, still with mixed success, to someone with aphantasia, those categories might easily bleed together, leading to false memory formation.
Because of these considerations, my colleagues are proceeding very carefully when it comes to experimenting with psychedelics and aphantasia. But that’s the way it should be; good science is quite slow and considered.
Still, I’m excited about what these future trials will reveal about the brain and consciousness in general. And for people who can’t create mental imagery and want to, I think they will have a huge impact. For them, I think they could be brilliant.
Thomas Pace, PhD, is a lecturer in the Mental Health and Neuroscience Postgraduate Programs and a researcher in the Healthy Brain Ageing Research Program at the Thompson Institute. He is a cognitive neuroscientist specializing in multimodal neuroimaging, metacognition, mental imagery, and dementia risk reduction.
February / March 2026
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June/July 2025
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April/May 2025
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February/March 2025
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October/November 2024
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June / July 2024
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April May / 2024
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February / March 2024
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December 2023 / January 2024
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October / November 2023
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August/September 2023
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June/July 2023
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➡The Race to Contain AI Before Singularity
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April/May 2023
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➡The Nuclear-Submarine Arms Race Is Getting Intense, and the U.S. Just Took a Massive Leap Forward
➡ Iran Is Becoming a Drone Superpower—By Stealing American Technology
February/March 2023
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➡ The Secret War to Take Out Iran’s Fleet of F-14 Jets
➡ Russia Is Trying to Intimidate the U.S. with Hypersonic Missiles and Big, Scary Nukes—And It's More Than a Threat
December 2022/January 2023
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➡ China and Russia Are Dominating the Hypersonic Arms Race—And It’s Not Even Close
➡ When the South Fork Dam Broke, a Pennsylvania City Washed Away. Which Town Is Next?
➡ The Navy’s New $13 Billion Aircraft Carrier Is Already Obsolete. This Weapon Can Save It.
October/November 2022
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➡ Inside the Final Minutes of the Concorde Disaster—and How It Doomed Supersonic Travel for Decades
➡ How the Massive Cargo Ship Felicity Ace Sank, Taking $400 Million Worth of Exotic Supercars With It
➡ I Turned My Old Gas-Guzzler Into a Zippy EV for $15,000
August/September 2022
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Featuring:
➡ Cosmic Secrets of the 17 Most Powerful Mega-Telescopes on Earth—and Beyond
➡ Can the Air Force's Secret, Hypersonic Jet Reclaim the Skies From Russia and China?
➡ For 50 Years, the Zodiac Killer's 340 Cipher Stumped the FBI—Then Three Amateurs Cracked the Code
➡ America's Most Fearsome Howitzer Has Entered the War in Ukraine
June/July 2022
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Featuring:
➡ Every Single Drone Fighting in the Skies Over Ukraine
➡ How to Buy a New Car in 2022 Without Getting Fleeced
➡ This Megastructure Could Keep Us Alive Forever
➡ The Race to Revolutionize EV Batteries
Ashley Stimpson is a freelance journalist who writes most often about science, conservation, and the outdoors. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, WIRED, Nat Geo, Atlas Obscura, and elsewhere. She lives in Columbia, Maryland, with her partner, their greyhound, and a very bad cat.
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