Absence of shared representation in the visual cortex challenges unconscious imagery in aphantasia

Aphantasia is defined as the absence (or near-absence) of imagery experience, most commonly in but not necessarily limited to the visual modality. While the neural and cognitive underpinnings of aphantasia remain hotly debated (see Zeman¹ for a recent review), a proposal that has recently gained attention is that people with aphantasia may have unconscious mental imagery², meaning that despite lacking the experience associated with imagery, they may still possess the relevant neural activity. A recent article in Current Biology by Chang et al.³ reported finding 'imageless imagery' in aphantasic subjects, thus seemingly supporting this view. However, we argue here that the representations found in aphantasic subjects by Chang et al.³, as well as in other studies (e.g., by Liu et al.^4,5), should not be viewed as unconscious imagery because they fail to show the perception-like pattern usually associated with mental imagery.