Articles

Aphantasia is the inability to voluntarily form mental images. Sort of like “mind blindness”.

It was first described by Francis Galton in 1880, but it wasn’t until 2015 that Adam Zeman published about it in a journal, labeling it as aphantasia. 

If you want to know if you or someone you know has this condition, try to visualize and apple (any object will do), then make questions about its color, shape, size, and ask them to change positions, open it, slice it, etc. People with aphantasia won’t be able to “see” the apple in their minds. 

Now, this doesn’s stop you from being an artist. Glen Keane, who illustrated The Little Mermaid, is among the 2% of the population living with this rare condition. My husband is another one.