Conditions Related to and Adjacent to Aphantasia

This file compares claims from /research/05_related_conditions.md against r/Aphantasia accounts retrieved via hybrid search (k=25 per claim).

Claim 1: "Hyperphantasia is the mirror image of aphantasia: imagery so vivid it rivals perception itself."

Source: Zeman et al. (2020), Cortex; "Phantasia - The psychological significance of lifelong visual imagery vividness extremes."

Supporting accounts

"Hyperphantasia is the condition of having extremely vivid mental imagery.It is the opposite condition to aphantasia, where mental visual imagery is not present.The experience of hyperphantasia is more common than aphantasia" 2022 · t1_indobk9 ↗

"It’s a spectrum of how vivid and how voluntarily people can conjure mental imagery. People with hyperphantasia can conjure mental imagery that is as vivid as a dream." 2023 · t1_k9hj6df ↗

"My wife has hyperphantasia and I'm an Aphant. There was a long period of time it was not something either of us understood." 2022 · t1_indvmrg ↗

Contradicting / qualifying accounts

"Is this kind of image why I keep seeing people who claim to have hyperphantasia just because their mental imagery is vivid? Hyperphantasia implies the ability to do I guess “advanced” visualization stuff - manipulate, create, rotate, disassemble, rewind, etc." 2024 · t1_lq9g2pl ↗

Extending observations

"If someone can look into a mirror and alter their face that would be called hallucinationing not visualizing" 2024 · t1_l7a5hpx ↗

Claim 2: "82% of aphantasics were also anauralic, and 97% of anauralics were also aphantasic."

Source: Hinwar & Lambert (2021), Frontiers in Psychology, "Anauralia: The Silent Mind and Its Association With Aphantasia."

Supporting accounts

"The exact numbers are a bit uncertain but it seems over half of aphants are also have anauralia/auditory aphantasia. One study claimed 82% while the above study shows it can't be more than 70%. But certainly there is a large overlap." 2024 · t1_l3pf0or ↗

"Anauralia or auditory aphantasia is the lack of sounds in the mind. One study found 82% of aphantasics to also have anauralia." 2023 · t1_k5z0th1 ↗

"Anauralia is the inability to imagine sound. Many people with Aphantasia cannot imagine sound, smell, taste, or touch. I lack all of those abilities. I think silently and cannot imagine music or other sounds" 2024 · t1_ljgwvkl ↗

Contradicting / qualifying accounts

"Isn’t it called anauralia? My mind is silent but I have a strong inner monologue. Also a total aphant" 2023 · t1_jmeec97 ↗

Extending observations

"The exact numbers on Inner Hearing/Anauralia among aphants is not known. About a quarter of us are missing all senses, including sound. According to a large study, about 30% of us are only missing visuals. One small study found 82% of their aphants also had anauralia (which obviously conflicts with the other study). My guess is between 30% and 50% have inner hearing as you do." 2024 · t1_m0q0l9v ↗

Claim 3: "Anendophasia is a more recent and contested term... referring to absent or near-absent inner speech. It is conceptually narrower than anauralia: anendophasia targets specifically the inner voice for verbal thought, whereas anauralia covers all auditory imagery."

Source: Nedergaard & Lupyan (2024), Psychological Science; Lambert (2026), Auditory Perception & Cognition.

Supporting accounts

"First, inner voice and internal monologue are 2 separate things. You can have one without the other. I have an internal monologue, but I've never had an inner voice. This is called Worded Thinking." 2026 · t1_oe9j1mt ↗

"Welcome. The internal monologue is thinking in words with or without the sensation of a voice (the inner voice). With voice it is Inner Speech. Without voice it is Worded Thinking. I have Worded Thinking." 2025 · t1_n0a6wi2 ↗

"The lack of internal monologue is called anendophasia. According to the scientist who coined the term, about 15% of people either can't or rarely think in words. It does not appear to be connected to aphantasia." 2026 · t1_odmw2iu ↗

Contradicting / qualifying accounts

"I didn't think you can have a silent mind and an inner monologue. Don't they cancel eachother out." 2026 · t1_oekjmry ↗

Extending observations

"I have an internal monologue but no inner voice. That’s called worded thinking. I also lack other sounds, which is called anauralia or auditory aphantasia. Actually I’m missing all senses in my mind." 2026 · t1_oanvfc5 ↗

Claim 4: "Monzel, Vetterlein, Hogeterp and Reuter (2023, Perception) tested aphantasics on standardised face-recognition batteries and found only modest reductions that were not face-specific - aphantasics were mildly worse at recognising visual stimuli generally, not selectively impaired for faces."

Source: Monzel, Vetterlein, Hogeterp & Reuter (2023), Perception, "No increased prevalence of prosopagnosia in aphantasia."

Supporting accounts

"Face blindness isn’t being unable to to visualise faces, it’s being unable to recognise faces. Someone with prosopagnosia could see their own mother’s face and have no idea who they are. They have to rely on other things to recognise people like their voice or their hair." 2023 · t1_jglpmfv ↗

"The ones I know recognise faces just fine, they just can't visualise them. Aphants obviously also can't visualise faces but most of us recognise them just fine." 2023 · t1_kbjvmr2 ↗

Contradicting / qualifying accounts

"Oh yes, I have face blindness, or formally prosopagnosia. I often don’t recognise myself in photos or the mirror" 2024 · t1_lpmvygj ↗

"A lot of us get a degree of face blindness aka prosopagnosia. That means we dint recognise a face as a face, but have to remember other stuff. We have a liking for people with scars, birthmarks, distinctive hair, beads… anything to help our poor brains remember enough details to be able to recognise them next time." 2025 · t1_no02ib6 ↗

Extending observations

"I cannot remember anyone’s face, only facts about it I learned by rote, but prosopagnosia is the inability to recognise faces." 2023 · t1_jpzpm8v ↗

Claim 5: "Aphantasic synaesthetes are 'associators' (knowing the colour without seeing it) rather than 'projectors' (seeing the colour in external space), as one would expect from the absence of vivid sensory imagery."

Source: Dance, Hawkins, Simner et al. (2021), Consciousness and Cognition, "What is the relationship between Aphantasia, Synaesthesia and Autism?"

Supporting accounts

"However, aphantasia influenced the type of synaesthesia experienced (favouring ‘associator’ over ‘projector’ synaesthesia - a distinction tied to the phenomenology of the synaesthetic experience)." 2023 · t1_ka9lxcz ↗

"I have synesthesia, but I have music >> colour synesthesia, but visual aphantasia. You might object: Then how do you “see” colors with apahntasia? The truth is I do not. But, I always have a feeling that is associated with those colours, and music will make me replicate those feelings." 2020 · t1_fwxec60 ↗

"I actually have associative grapheme-color synesthesia myself, and yeah it feels really weird having such a strong automatic association between letters and colors when I can see neither in my mind's eye. I sometimes describe it like variables in code: the letter simply has a color assigned to it, just like how it has a sound and meaning assigned to it." 2025 · t1_m8vejqx ↗

Contradicting / qualifying accounts

None surfaced in top-25; the projector/associator distinction maps cleanly onto how aphants describe their synaesthesia.

Extending observations

"I have aphantasia and for me 7 is green and sharp, that's why it's my less favorite number (and green my less favorite color)" 2023 · t3_17xpi1t ↗

Claim 6: "Aphantasics scored higher on the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ), specifically on imagination and social-skills subscales."

Source: Dance, Hawkins, Simner et al. (2021), Consciousness and Cognition; Carmichael et al. (2024).

Supporting accounts

"I suspect that there may be a big overlap with autism. I discovered about my aphantasia first and then a couple years later discovered I’m autistic. It makes sense — you hear about autistic people who can like fly over a city once and then redraw it just from their visual memory. Autism is a spectrum of extremes, and aphantasia is the other side of that extreme. I also have ADHD." 2023 · t1_j43icrw ↗

"I read that there is slight increase of autism in people with aphantasia, but I don’t think it’s related." 2023 · t1_k3bzt4j ↗

Contradicting / qualifying accounts

"I have autism, but others in my family who are autistic as well don't have aphantasia. They are rather on the other end of the spectrum." 2019 · t1_epuavjs ↗

"With autism, the overlap seems more indirect and less consistent, so it’s not really an apples to apples comparison." 2026 · t1_ohwr52s ↗

Extending observations

"There’s a decent amount of overlap, many people with SDAM also have aphantasia." 2026 · t1_ohwkzue ↗

Claim 7: "Alexithymia - difficulty identifying and describing one's own emotions - shares a striking phenotypic feature with aphantasia: blocked access to internal states."

Source: Wicken et al. (2024), Biological Psychiatry: Neuroscience and Practice; Floridou et al. (2026), Neuropsychologia.

Supporting accounts

"Alexithymia is a personality construct characterized by the subclinical inability to identify and describe emotions in the self. The core characteristics of alexithymia are marked dysfunction in emotional awareness, social attachment, and interpersonal relating." 2018 · t1_e8gndlo ↗

"No names feelings (literally). Unable to explain or give names to feelings. So I can identify primary feelings (happy, sad, angry) but not the secondary or tertiary feelings (jealousy, embarrassment, vulnerability)" 2024 · t1_lrlb28l ↗

"affective alexithymia is when somebody experiences very low emotional arousal, in turn, the sensations that usually accompany those emotions are very seldom felt and/or noticed." 2021 · t1_hqqbwey ↗

Contradicting / qualifying accounts

"I haven't got that. That only affects feelings in the NOW experience. Not emotional memory in itself." 2024 · t1_lrlb28l ↗

Extending observations

"Guy with aphantasia and alexithymia (inability to identify or differentiate between emotions) talks about life with both of these conditions and the connection between the two" 2021 · t3_pbngq7 ↗

Synthesis

The lived experience on r/Aphantasia maps onto the academic taxonomy with high fidelity for the modality-parallel deficits (anauralia, anendophasia, multisensory aphantasia) and the synaesthesia phenomenology, where users spontaneously describe themselves as "associators" using the exact projector/associator language Dance et al. derived from VVIQ-stratified samples. The 82% aphant-anauralic overlap from Hinwar & Lambert circulates as a contested but recognised number on the subreddit, with at least one careful commenter noting that other studies put the figure closer to 50-70%, almost exactly the qualification the research file flags. The autism and prosopagnosia claims are where lived experience diverges most: users routinely report face-recognition difficulty as part of their aphantasia, even though Monzel et al. (2023) argue the effect is non-specific. SDAM is the strongest emergent theme - Reddit threads explicitly distinguish "aphantasia about future things" from "SDAM about past things" and treat the dissociation as live experiential knowledge, mirroring Palombo and Watkins' commentary. The richest extension Reddit offers is the fine-grained distinction between Inner Speech, Worded Thinking, and Unworded Speech - a four-way decomposition of inner verbal experience that the academic anendophasia construct does not yet capture.