Aphantasiac mathematicians? [duplicate]

Question

Over the past few years there's been a fair amount of publicity given to the phenomenon of aphantasia, the condition of being unable to form visual images in one's mind or remember what things look like. Such a person after closing their eyes may be unable to remember what colors look like a second or two after seeing them, or unable to imagine what green looks like when nothing green is where they can see it.

In thinking about simple geometric problems and graphs I rely heavily on being able to imagine their visual appearance. (For that matter I can name the fifty states in the U.S.A. and the ten provinces and three territories of Canada in seconds by remembering the visual appearance of the maps, but if I tried to do it alphabetically I would hesitate for long periods between list items and almost certainly miss some.) It seems that a mathematician who is an aphantasiac would be unable to do that, and their cognition would function differently.

Is anything known about this? Has anything been published about it?

Answer 1

Some personal experiences are described at Mathematicians with aphantasia (inability to visualize things in one's mind)

For the more specific question "How does aphantasia affect doing mathematics?" see Brailey Sims talk on Aphantasia and Mathematical Thinking.

It seems to me likely that the freedom from the precision and detail of a visual image is a boon to my ability to think and work abstractly. Where I do feel a lack of being able to conceive visual images on which to work is a handicap is in anticipating and seeing through a symbolic/algebraic argument, or carrying out any lengthy algebraic computations/manipulations in my head.

A study from 2020 by the University of Exeter, based on interviews with 2000 individuals, found that more than 20% of people with aphantasia worked in science, computing or mathematics. This is attributed to an enhanced ability to "assimilate complex information into new ideas and approaches".