UNSW scientists are planning to conduct a world-first brain imaging study to determine why some people cannot create visual images of people, places and things in their mind’s eye, known as congenital aphantasia.
A team led by UNSW Associate Professor Joel Pearson has launched a crowd-funding campaign to raise money to carry out functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies to try and understand the neurological basis of mental imagery.
People with and without congenital aphantasia, which has only recently been recognized as a new condition, will participate. The findings could also have implications for common mental disorders such as schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease, which are associated with disturbed mental imagery.