Aphantasia and visual working memory: No direct evidence of impaired visual working memory in aphantasics, either in behavioral performance or the accuracy of a multivoxel pattern classifier

> Visual mental imagery and visual working memory are often thought to be closely related. After all, both have been argued to involve the temporary maintenance of visual representations in conscious awareness. We might expect, therefore, that individuals with aphantasia would show impairments in visual working memory performance. However, demonstrating this has proven surprisingly difficult. Most studies have failed to find evidence that aphantasia impacts visual working memory, possibly due to methodological designs that have allowed aphantasics to compensate for any impairments. To test this, we conducted three studies: two behavioral studies with tasks intended to prevent compensation and one that utilized multivoxel pattern analysis of fMRI data. Unexpectedly, we found no significant differences between aphantasics and typical imagers, either in behavioral performance or in the multivariate analysis. This may suggest that aphantasia is a variation in conscious awareness, rather than an inability to generate or maintain visual representations.