It’s strange the way our minds can paint entire universes behind closed eyes… yet for some, that inner movie screen stays completely blank.
Aphantasia, if you’ve never heard the term, is the condition where a person can’t visualize mental images.
No “mind’s eye.” No picture of a loved one, no mental replay of a sunset, no daydream in color or form.
There is a twist though, many people with aphantasia still dream.
That alone feels like a paradox, doesn’t it?
How can someone who can’t see mental pictures while awake suddenly start “seeing” while asleep?
The human brain is funny that way.
Dreaming isn’t quite the same as visualization, it’s more primal, a kind of full-brain theater that doesn’t ask for permission or conscious effort.
Studies (and countless personal stories) suggest that people with aphantasia do dream, they just experience those dreams differently.
Some describe them as more emotional than visual, more about sensations, movement, sound, or even dialogue. It’s like feeling a dream instead of watching it.
What Is Aphantasia?
The term aphantasia was first coined in 2015, though the phenomenon has likely existed for as long as humans have.
It sits on a spectrum: some people experience complete mental “blindness,” while others can visualize faint shapes or flashes of light.
Despite that, many people with aphantasia lead creative, vivid lives, they just process imagination differently, often through words, logic, sound, or emotion instead of imagery.
It’s not a disorder or a flaw, just a unique way the mind works.
In fact, some researchers believe aphantasia might even sharpen other senses or forms of creativity, proving that imagination isn’t limited to what we can see, but what we can feel and think.
If you ask someone with aphantasia what their dreams are like, you’ll get wildly varied answers.
One person might say it’s all “impressions” … they know something’s happening, even if they can’t see it.
Another might recall textures, sounds, or the emotional pulse of a moment rather than images. It’s a bit like remembering the rhythm of a song without hearing the notes.
And that’s where it gets fascinating. Dreams in aphantasia often show us just how layered human consciousness really is.
They reveal that dreaming isn’t limited to visuals, it’s storytelling in its rawest form, woven from instinct and emotion.
People might wake up knowing they were chased or comforted or flying, yet never once “see” those scenes unfold.
The brain fills in the story differently, without relying on the visual cortex in the usual way.
Do Aphantasic People Have Lucid Dreams?
Lucid dreaming, knowing you’re dreaming while it’s happening, can still occur with aphantasia, though it might take on an entirely different texture.
Instead of “seeing” clarity, it’s more like knowing clarity. Awareness rather than imagery.
Someone might realize mid-dream that they’re in control, yet experience it as thought and feeling rather than vivid scenery.
For many, lucid dreams become an introspective exercise rather than a cinematic one.
The mind, stripped of its visuals, turns inward…toward meaning, intuition, or abstract thought. It’s almost philosophical, in a way
While some describe frustration over the lack of visuals, others find it deeply freeing, because it’s pure consciousness, dreaming as a concept rather than a picture show.
The Science (And Mystery) Behind It
Neuroscientists still don’t have all the answers, which makes this topic such a beautiful mystery. What they do know is that dreaming and visualization, though related, activate overlapping but not identical brain regions.
Aphantasia affects voluntary mental imagery, your conscious ability to picture things but dreaming taps into involuntary imagery networks that don’t require that same trigger.
So while someone with aphantasia can’t imagine a red apple while awake, their brain might still produce flashes of color or shape during REM sleep without them consciously summoning it.
Not everyone with aphantasia dreams visually.
Some experience what researchers call “conceptual dreams” …experiences without form, a kind of knowing or narrative without pictures.
It’s like your mind is playing the audiobook version of a dream instead of the movie.
What This Says About How We Dream
If anything, aphantasia reminds us that dreaming is far more than visual theater.
It’s emotional memory, sound, intuition, movement, a full-bodied experience of being somewhere else, even when the mind’s eye is closed to sight.
People with aphantasia might not see their dreams, but they still live them.
And maybe that’s the point: dreams aren’t only about seeing. They’re about feeling.
Whether painted in light or carried in sensation, every dream is a language the subconscious uses to speak, and each of us just happens to hear it a little differently.
