Acquired aphantasia accounts

For people who once had a mind's eye and then lost it, the trigger is rarely a mystery: a head hit, a virus, a surgery. The grief and the cataloguing are the through-line.

After a concussion

A blow to the head is the most cited trigger, and the descriptions are unusually concrete — a dated event, a before-state, an after-state.

"A concussion brought on my aphantasia too.

This was 4 years ago now. Hopefully things will get back to normal for you soon, and everything is going well post concussion, it's a bitch.

Edit: I've never attempted exercises, I had an inconclusive eeg and gave up as attempting to visualize things as basic as colors can trigger migraines for me." 2018 · t1_eb5q9cz ↗

"I was a non-aphant from birth to 8 years old— then I had a severe concussion. I couldn’t exactly explain to the doctors what happened & their term of “brain fog” after a concussion made sense to 8 year old me to explain the loss in ability to visualize. I can still visualize some memories from before the concussion if I really concentrate but older I get, the hazier and more distant they are." 2020 · t1_fs8delh ↗

"during a pretty nasty concussion in September I realized that I was struggling with memory and with being able to visualize. Afterwards, my memory problems went away but I'm still dealing with what feels like aphantasia. Basically having an idea of what something looks like in my head but being unable to grasp it or see it fully, feeling like \"its on the tip ofor my tongue\"." 2022 · t3_s2fl7m ↗

"I lost my ability to visualize and daydream. I also Feel like my brain is not processing the world around me fully anymore. My creative, abstract and assosiative thinkin is ruined, and my memory is bad because i used to remember by visualizing.

I used to live in my head, but now i cant daydream at all. It so sad and makes me Feel empty." 2022 · t3_u5j7ig ↗

After COVID, surgery, or other illness

A second cluster traces onset to a viral infection or a medical event. Long COVID dominates this group; some report partial imagery that "feels not present" rather than total blankness.

"A friend has long covid and said that the first sign that alerted her to it was realizing that she could no longer bring images to mind. She knew about aphantasia due to me telling her and her husband about it a few years back.

The bigger issue for her is brain fog, e.g. driving along and having to pull over because she suddenly can't remember how to get somewhere that she's driven to many times before." 2022 · t1_iekl2zs ↗

"I am close to aphantasia as in that while i can have vivid images these feel not present anymore at all and quickly gone" 2022 · t1_igncxu0 ↗

"I probably had covid 2 years ago. It lasted for about a day with serious chills and headache. I have considered long covid. My physical energy levels feel fine, but my brain/mind whatever you want to call it feels blank." 2024 · t1_kvcyldr ↗

"I have had it but since getting long covid it has become debilitating." 2025 · t1_n55be6v ↗

What is missing — described from the inside

Acquired aphants give the most precise inventories of what is gone, because they remember the room they used to live in.

"the biggest thing I miss is all my years of visual memory. The only way I can remember things is if the memory is triggered by a question or conversation and suddenly the words come out of no where, I say them, then they are gone again. If some one asks me a question and it doesn't trigger anything, and I try to search for it, all I see is blackness. No way in to find it. Before to remember things I took what I would call a screen shot of it, then could recall that image when ever I wanted. Now all those screen shots and the little movies that were my life are just gone." 2023 · t1_jccl41k ↗

"My mental images and videos were all crystal clear and included every detail that exists in real life. I had daydreams numerous times a day - just about all the time that I wasn't engaged in mental work or talking to people. Driving, boring meetings, in bed before before falling asleep - all perfect for daydreams. And they were all as vivid and clear as real life. I miss it." 2025 · t1_nwoikag ↗

"After my concussion i have lost all mental experiences.

I cannot visualize inside my head, Feel inside my head, hear inside my head and so on. All has gone away gradually." 2022 · t3_xj3rrg ↗

Partial recovery, slow recovery, no recovery

Reports vary. Some describe gradual return after years; others have given up on exercises because trying to visualize triggers migraines. Recovery, when it happens, is measured in years, not weeks.

"I got long haul covid a month after getting a bad concussion so not sure which one did it, but I acquired aphantasia. Its been 5 years and I am starting to get it back a little so there may be might at the end of your tunnel" 2024 · t1_m1lid93 ↗

"Slowly, I am starting to be able to visualize like before, only years after recovery." 2024 · t1_kuoqcc7 ↗

Synthesis

Acquired accounts cluster around three triggers — concussion / TBI, viral illness (especially long COVID), and surgery. The phenomenology is more granular than congenital reports because the writer has a baseline: they name specific things that vanished (daydreams in boring meetings, the "screen shot" that could be re-summoned, color in dreams) and specific frictions that replaced them (resistance, cotton-feeling, images that "burn out at once"). Recovery stories exist but are slow — five years to "get it back a little," or visualizing "like before" only "years after recovery." A non-trivial subset never recovers, and a few report that exercising the imagery muscle triggers migraines, so they stop trying. The lesion-mapping work summarised in /research/02_neuroscience.md (Spagna et al., the Fusiform Imagery Node) gives a candidate neural story for why such varied insults can converge on the same outcome.