Some people believe that aphantasia is curable. There’s a CBT technique called “image streaming” developed in the 1970s that appears to work for a significant fraction of aphantasics, and there are online communities that discuss a range of other techniques.
I personally have a fairly strong case of aphantasia – when I imagine things, I get faint, fleeting outlines instead of vivid colors. They also appear in a semi-abstract space as opposed to my visual field. My spatial working memory is still significantly above average (at least, according to the tests on Lumosity I took a decade ago), and I’m able to “visualize” complex scenes or maps quickly. I can still create memory palaces. However, I don’t actually see these things in vivid color when I think about them.
However, there are a few times when my mind can create vivid images. During the last couple of minutes before I fall asleep, I sometimes get what’s called hypnagogic imagery – bright, vivid images that appear in a dreamlike state and are sometimes controllable. Hypnagogic imagery usually occurs during brain states that are dominated by slow theta waves, the sort of frequencies that are associated with deep meditation and sleep. I also get bright vivid dreams from time to time. Furthermore, I can remember having a somewhat stronger visual imagination when I was a kid (age < 10) and I still remember getting occasional bright visuals when imagining things as a college student. This leads me to believe that curing aphantasia in my case might just be a matter of getting into the right mental state and then reinforcing neural connections that have weakened over time.
I’ve tried the supposed aphantasia-curing image streaming techniques for a couple of days now. So far there’s been a small but noticeable impact; most forums say it takes weeks or months to see something significant happen. I’ve already noticed that I feel more in touch with my visual imagination that happens at an abstract level, and I’m extracting slightly more signal from the blackness at a visual level.
