Researchers have begun to notice patterns linking weak or absent imagery with reduced vivid autobiographical memory and with lower emotional response to verbal accounts of distress. Those associations suggest a pathway rather than a single cause: the way we internally represent scenes might influence how easily we summon personal memories or how readily we simulate another person’s experience. Exploring that pathway requires careful measures, diverse populations, and attention to how visual and verbal processes interact in everyday contexts.
If imagery is one strand of the human toolkit for thinking about ourselves and others, understanding its role could broaden how we support people who experience it differently. Could alternative strategies strengthen memory and social reasoning for those with limited imagery? How might educators and clinicians adapt to include non-visual routes to empathy and recollection? Follow the full article to see where current data point and what experiments could illuminate how rendering in the mind connects to human potential and inclusive practice.
In their letter [1], Zeman et al. raise the intriguing suggestion that visual imagery (which we argued should be understood as graphical rendering [2]) has a central role in social cognition. Specifically, they point to an association between aphantasia and deficits in autobiographical memory [3,4] and lower empathy to verbal descriptions of distressing events [5]. To be clear upfront, we agree with Zeman et al.’s bottom line that visual imagery might have social implications, and that this idea deserves thought and exploration.
