Don't think of a pink elephant: Individual differences in visualisation predict involuntary imagery and its neural correlates

Abstract

There are substantial differences in the capacity of people to have imagined visual experiences, ranging from a lifelong inability (Congenital Aphantasia) to people who report having imagined experiences that are as vivid as actually seeing (Hyper-Phantasia). While Congenital Aphantasia has typically been framed as a cognitive deficit, it is possible that a weak or absent ability to have imagined visual sensations is balanced by a heightened resistance to intrusive thoughts – which are experienced as an imagined sensation. Here, we report on a direct test of that proposition. We asked people to either imagine, or to try not to imagine having a range of audio and visual experiences while we recorded their brain activity with electroencephalography (EEG). Ratings describing the subjective vividness of different people's voluntary visualisations predicted if they would also report having involuntary visualisations – such as an imagined experience of seeing a pink elephant when they were asked not to. Both the prevalence of different people's involuntary visualisations and the typical vividness of their visualisations could be predicted by neural correlates of disinhibition, working memory, and neural feedback. Our data suggest that the propensity of people to have involuntary visual experiences can scale with the subjective intensity of their typical experiences of visualisation.