‘Like a film in my mind’: hyperphantasia and the quest to understand vivid imaginations

Using fMRI to scan the brains of people at rest, he has found that hyperphantasic people have greater connectivity between the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in “higher-order” thinking such as planning and decision-making, and the areas responsible for visual processing, which lie towards the back of the skull.

“My guess is that if you say ‘apple’ to somebody with hyperphantasia, the linguistic representation of ‘apple’ in the brain immediately transmits the information to the visual system,” says Zeman. “For someone with aphantasia, the word and concept of ‘apple’ operate independently of the visual system, because those connections are weaker.”

— Read on www.theguardian.com/science/2024/apr/20/like-a-film-in-my-mind-hyperphantasia-and-the-quest-to-understand-vivid-imaginations