Aphantasia and dreams

Voluntary imagery and visual dreams

Aphantasia refers here to absent voluntary visual imagery: deliberately bringing a picture to mind while awake. In Zeman and colleagues’ questionnaire sample, most respondents with aphantasia reported visual dreams. Recruitment followed people contacting the researchers about their imagery. These retrospective, self-selected accounts establish reported experience in that sample, not a universal pattern or a separate brain mechanism for everyone.

A second questionnaire asked about several qualities

Dawes and colleagues compared self-reported imagery profiles and dreaming. Participants with aphantasia reported less frequent remembered dreaming and reduced sensory qualities compared with controls. Their questions covered several dimensions rather than simply asking whether visual dreams ever occurred. The study relied on self-report, and other sensory imagery varied within the aphantasia group. Its group comparison does not mean that every participant had the same experience or that no dreaming occurred when nothing was recalled.

Why these findings need not contradict each other

Reporting that visual dreams occur and reporting fewer or less sensory-rich dreams answer different questions. These studies used different samples and questionnaires. They therefore should not be combined into a single prevalence estimate or used to overrule an individual account.

Choose the question you actually want to answer

You might be interested in the experience during sleep, what you remember on waking, or what happens when you try to revisit it later. Give each its own wording. “I remember looking at a room” is an account of the remembered scene. “I can picture the room now” describes what you can do while awake. “I know where the door was” describes information you retain.

For an optional note, use those separate sentences and leave any answer uncertain. This is an editorial way to organise language, not an imagery assessment. There is no need to decide whether one of the descriptions is more authentic. Nor do you have to describe your whole experience as either a film or complete blankness if neither phrase fits. A precise partial description is useful in its own right.

An illustrative scene without a replayable picture

Consider this invented example: a person remembers a dream in which a friend placed a green cup beside a window. After waking, they can recount the action and say where the cup stood, but they cannot voluntarily produce a picture of it. They are uncertain whether the colour felt visually present in the dream or was simply known.

Those are separate statements, so the account can preserve all of them. We do not need to declare that the person secretly visualises, or that the dream was entirely nonvisual. The example illustrates careful reporting; it is not a case from either study and cannot diagnose the reader. If your own description is different, retain your words instead of trying to reproduce this one.

Leave room for sounds, feelings and uncertain detail

If you choose to make a record, start with whatever you remember most clearly. That could be a conversation, an arrangement of places, an emotion, a bodily impression or a sequence of events. You can write “uncertain” beside colour or appearance. Avoid filling in a sound because the scene contains a speaking person, or adding a picture because a visual noun appears in the account.

These are optional writing choices. A journal need not be illustrated, and its length is not a score. You may prefer a few keywords, a voice note or no record at all. The purpose here is to express the experience in language that fits, without making visual detail a standard that every account must meet.

Read a study without making it a ranking

When reading an imagery study, look for the question that produced the result. Was it about deliberately imagining something, remembering a dream, or describing one particular sensory feature? Then identify the comparison: an average across groups is different from a statement about every participant. Ask whether the article reports observations, proposes an explanation or draws a conclusion about a broader ability.

A useful reading note has three parts: the question, the answer actually measured, and what remains open. Keep claims about creativity, intelligence or suitability for an occupation outside what a dream account can decide. This is a way to scrutinise an argument, not a request to rank your experience against someone else’s.

What a more informative comparison would ask

A future study could ask the same people about voluntary imagery, reports immediately after waking, and their ability to reconstruct those reports later. Using clear wording for each stage would make the comparison easier to interpret. Including people recruited in different ways would also help test how much a result depends on who volunteered.

Those are research questions rather than promises about a forthcoming answer. For your own reading, the practical distinction is already usable: you can discuss a remembered experience without having to recreate it on demand. The dream-recall guide covers remembering and reporting; the vivid-dreams and colour guides cover different aspects of the account.

Sources & their limits

These sources support the statements indicated above. Their authors do not endorse this website or provide an assessment of your experience.

1. Dawes et al. (2020) — A cognitive profile of multi-sensory imagery, memory and dreaming in aphantasia

   Self-report comparison of dreaming and sensory imagery; group differences and heterogeneous experience.

   Cited in this guide · 3 places

   • A second questionnaire asked about several qualities
   • Why these findings need not contradict each other
   • Does not remembering dreams establish aphantasia?
2. Zeman et al. (2020) — Phantasia: The psychological significance of lifelong visual imagery vividness extremes

   Self-selected questionnaire respondents; reported visual dreaming alongside absent voluntary imagery.

   Cited in this guide · 3 places

   • Voluntary imagery and visual dreams
   • Why these findings need not contradict each other
   • Can I have aphantasia and report visual dreams?

Put the context beside an experience

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