Not spooked by Halloween ghost stories? You may have aphantasia
<p>Halloween movies often feature kids sitting around a campfire sharing gory, spooky stories, trying to get someone to scream in fear.</p>
<p>This weekend you might be doing the same – sharing a horror story with friends. You may find one friend doesn’t get scared, no matter how frightening a scene you try to paint in their mind.</p>
<p>So why are some people more easily spooked by stories than others? We ran an experiment to find out.</p>
<p><strong>Can you see it in your mind?</strong></p>
<p>One reason some people are more easily spooked could relate to how well they can visualise the scary scene in their mind.</p>
<p>When some people listen to a story they automatically conjure up the scene in their mind’s eye, while others have to focus really hard to create any sort of mental image.</p>
<p>A small proportion cannot visualise images at all. No matter how hard they try, they do not see anything in their mind. This inability to visualise is known as aphantasia.</p>
<p>Although we have known people vary in their ability to visualise <a rel="noopener" href="https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm" target="_blank">for many years</a>, the term aphantasia was not coined until <a rel="noopener" href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010945215001781?via%3Dihub" target="_blank">2015</a>.</p>
<p>We don’t yet know exactly how many people have aphantasia. But <a rel="noopener" href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010945220301404?via%3Dihub" target="_blank">estimates vary</a> at 1–4% of the population.</p>
<p><iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KuWSh4n5AiI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe> <em><span class="caption">Do you have aphantasia?</span></em></p>
<p><strong>How scared are you?</strong></p>
<p>If the ability to visualise images and scenes in the mind plays a role in how we react to spooky stories, what does that mean for people with aphantasia? How do they react when reading scary stories?</p>
<p>We <a rel="noopener" href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2021.0267" target="_blank">ran a study</a> to find out. We had people sit in the dark and read a number of short stories – not ghost stories, but ones with frightening, hypothetical scenarios.</p>
<p>One example involved someone being chased by a shark, another being covered in spiders.</p>
<p>As people read these stories, we recorded their fear levels by measuring how much the stories made them sweat.</p>
<p>We placed small electrodes on their fingers and ran a tiny electric current from one electrode to the other.</p>
<p>When you sweat this allows the electric current to flow from one electrode to the other easier, due to less resistance, and this results in <a rel="noopener" href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1094428116681073" target="_blank">increased skin conductance</a>.</p>
<p>This measure can pick up even very small increases in sweat you wouldn’t otherwise notice.</p>
<p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429220/original/file-20211028-13882-16y7l51.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429220/original/file-20211028-13882-16y7l51.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" alt="Scared man rowing away from sharks" /></a> <em><span class="caption">Imagine being chased by sharks. Some people can’t conjure up the image in their mind.</span> <span class="attribution"><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/escape-crisis-613248632" target="_blank" class="source">Shutterstock</a></span></em></p>
<p>For most people who could conjure up images in their mind, their skin conductance increased when they read these stories. But people with aphantasia didn’t show a significant increase in their skin conductance levels when reading the same scenarios.</p>
<p>There was no difference between the two groups when viewing scary pictures. This suggests aphantasic people’s lack of a reaction to these stories wasn’t due to a general dampening of emotional responses.</p>
<p>Instead, we concluded the lack of a change in skin conductance in these people with aphantasia is specific to being unable to <em>visualise</em> these fear-inducing stories.</p>
<p><strong>What’s going on in the brain?</strong></p>
<p>Very little work has been done to measure neural activity in people with aphantasia to give us a firm idea of why they cannot visualise images.</p>
<p>One <a rel="noopener" href="https://academic.oup.com/cercorcomms/article/2/2/tgab035/6265046" target="_blank">study</a> shows both the frontal and visual regions of the brain are linked to visualising images. And in people with aphantasia, the connection between these two areas is weaker.</p>
<p>Another study found the pattern of activity in visual regions of the brain <a rel="noopener" href="https://www.jneurosci.org/content/37/5/1367.abstract" target="_blank">is correlated</a> with the vividness of the mental images.</p>
<p>So any reduction in connectivity between the frontal and visual regions may result in less control over the visual regions. This might lead to the inability to visualise.</p>
<p><strong>So what if you have aphantasia?</strong></p>
<p>If you have aphantasia, it might just mean reading a <a rel="noopener" href="https://stephenking.com" target="_blank">Stephen King novel</a> is unlikely to ruffle your feathers.</p>
<p>Theoretically, remembering fearful experiences might also be less scary. We did not test personal memories in our study, but we hope to look at these in the future.</p>
<p>People with aphantasia report their personal memories (<a rel="noopener" href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758%2Fs13421-014-0402-5" target="_blank">autobiographical memories</a>) are <a rel="noopener" href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65705-7" target="_blank">less vivid</a> and <a rel="noopener" href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010945220301404?via%3Dihub" target="_blank">detailed</a> than people with visual imagery.</p>
<p>People with aphantasia may also be less likely to develop disorders associated with fear memories, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).</p>
<p>Another possibility is they still may develop PTSD but it presents <a rel="noopener" href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65705-7" target="_blank">in a different way</a> to people with visual imagery – without flashbacks. But more research is needed.</p>
<p><em><a rel="noopener" href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/rebecca-keogh-301841" target="_blank">Rebecca Keogh</a>, Research Fellow, Department of Cognitive Science, <a rel="noopener" href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/macquarie-university-1174" target="_blank">Macquarie University</a></em></p>
<p><em>This article is republished from <a rel="noopener" href="https://theconversation.com" target="_blank">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a rel="noopener" href="https://theconversation.com/not-spooked-by-halloween-ghost-stories-you-may-have-aphantasia-170712" target="_blank">original article</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Image: Shutterstock</em></p>
