Dr Reshanne Reeder

osf.ioMental health consequences of extremely vivid mental imagery: A qualitative investigation of managing anxiety with hyperphantasiaMental imagery is the ability to mentally simulate sensory experience in the absence of an external stimulus, with individual vividness ranging from extremely weak or absent (aphantasia) to superlativ...

Complementary to my earlier study on mental health/care in aphantasia, a study of hyperphantasia. The results may surprise you! Mental health consequences of extremely vivid mental imagery: A qualitative investigation of managing anxiety with hyperphantasia: osf.io/preprints/ps...

2/3. Hyperphantasics actually have a similarly difficult time with these techniques as aphantasics - but in a different way. While aphantasics struggle to visualize, hyperphantasics struggle to control their intense visualizations for therapeutic purposes.

3/3. Combined, our studies suggest that both extremes of imagery respond unpredictably to therapeutic mental imagery techniques and experience mental health symptoms differently from typical. Therefore, both need more attention in mental health research!

Times Higher Education (THE)

1/3. We thought that because having mental imagery seems to help with common therapeutic techniques like guided imagery or imagery restructuring, perhaps having hyperphantasia helps you to be especially receptive to these techniques. But this is NOT what we found!

Dr Reshanne Reeder reposted

@timeshighered.bsky.social

20 July

Growing pressure on probationary staff to win grants represents ‘material divergence’ from agreed policies, argue UCU leaders. @jgro-the.bsky.social reports #research #highered #UCU #academicsky https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/research-income-targets-liverpools-new-academics-unfair

11 July

Andrea Floris, I don't know.who you are, but thank you for writing this. I hope it reaches the people who need to read it! www.linkedin.com/posts/andrea...

biorxiv.orgThe Role of Visual Imagery in Face Recognition and Confidence Revisited: New Evidence from Aphantasia, Sampling Context Effects, and a Meta-AnalysisThe absence of voluntary visual imagery, known as aphantasia, offers a unique lens into the role of visual imagery in visual memory processes such as face recognition. While aphantasics often report d...

7 July

Another aphantasia face memory preprint just dropped - an impressive mega-study led by Varg Koenigsmark! The Role of Visual Imagery in Face Recognition and Confidence Revisited: New Evidence from Aphantasia, Sampling Context Effects, and a Meta-Analysis www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

7 July

Grant writing season

Dr Reshanne Reeder reposted

Replying to @kerblooee.bsky.social

Humans are not black boxes. Experience is everything. This is not a definition problem. This is a "completely ignoring human experience" problem. Some things cannot be measured objectively (yet). Until then, qualitative evidence is the most important evidence we have.

link.springer.comMental image vividness and aphantasia judgements are fundamentally compromised by overlooked definition problems - Psychonomic Bulletin & ReviewVividness judgements are intended to capture variance in the axis that uniquely separates the experience of a mental image from other unambiguously sensory perceptual experiences, and from a completel...

"...there are legitimate reasons to doubt even highly confident imagery self-report". link.springer.com/article/10.3... Ahem - enjoy this alphabet of hyperphantasia! Exhibit A: ...

Z: Instruction: Imagine a horse. "I can become the horse."

"...there are legitimate reasons to doubt even highly confident imagery self-report". link.springer.com/article/10.3... Ahem - enjoy this alphabet of hyperphantasia! Exhibit A: ...

X: "I don’t think I have like a terrible memory, but I don’t trust everything because I do think some memories that I have might be imaginations."

Y: "For sleeping you count sheep. The problem was...I'd imagine sheep jumping over, but then my thoughts would run away with this and I would...have things pop in...there might be a wolf...or there might be goats...and it would be a problem with me controlling these things."

"...there are legitimate reasons to doubt even highly confident imagery self-report". link.springer.com/article/10.3... Ahem - enjoy this alphabet of hyperphantasia! Exhibit A: ...

V: "I have like a whole city that I'll dream inside of, and I have like the entire mental landscape of the city, and so I can, like, place my dreams in it."

W: "I would say my consciousness is much less...less connected to my body...than a lot of people... so when I talk about, oh you know, what if you could be a cyborg, I’m like, hell yeah, sign me up, because like, to me, what’s going on in my head is like so much more interesting."

"...there are legitimate reasons to doubt even highly confident imagery self-report". link.springer.com/article/10.3... Ahem - enjoy this alphabet of hyperphantasia! Exhibit A: ...

T: P3 created a mental box to house traumatic and anxious imagery. She had trepidation about the images coming back if she were to engage with them: “I wouldn’t want to use [the boxes] again because then it would remind me, and I’d visualise what I went through if I was to think about that box."

U: "What it is like for me, reading books... I create all the places described, and I can like, it’s like I see it all, and then looking back, even books I’ve read, oh, years ago- I can like see these places like kind of a memory."

"...there are legitimate reasons to doubt even highly confident imagery self-report". link.springer.com/article/10.3... Ahem - enjoy this alphabet of hyperphantasia! Exhibit A: ...

R: "As a child I had such vivid- they weren’t even night terrors...they were imaginings. And I used to pretend that they were nightmares because I knew that you were allowed to get distressed by a nightmare, but if you were awake and seeing horrible things, then it was naughty to...make a fuss."

S: P6 found mental images too realistic, and so could not tolerate interacting with them: "I think if I spoke to the Gothic horrors, then, then they might (laughs), think they might slip across and become real. I know that they wouldn’t, but that would be a really bad idea."

"...there are legitimate reasons to doubt even highly confident imagery self-report". link.springer.com/article/10.3... Ahem - enjoy this alphabet of hyperphantasia! Exhibit A: ...

P: "Both me and my daughter can’t cope with reading fiction...It’s always too intense. Always. The feelings, the emotions...it’s so intense, and it’s more intense in a book than watching a film...at least with the film, it’s someone else’s, and I can switch it off."

Q: "It can feel quite dangerous sometimes to imagine something awful happening because I feel as if I’ve made it [happen for real]."

"...there are legitimate reasons to doubt even highly confident imagery self-report". link.springer.com/article/10.3... Ahem - enjoy this alphabet of hyperphantasia! Exhibit A: ...

N: Several participants had well-established inner worlds that they could step into and control at whim. P5 steps into a dystopian world, where it is just him and his dog. “It’s been like therapy for me in some ways. Because it's the one place that I’m safe...because I genuinely control everything."

O: On having a fantasy world in their head: "There’s no responsibility at all in that world. There’s no pressure from anybody else because nobody else...no expectation...it really does...have an emotional effect on me."

"...there are legitimate reasons to doubt even highly confident imagery self-report". link.springer.com/article/10.3... Ahem - enjoy this alphabet of hyperphantasia! Exhibit A: ...

K: All participants expressed having an inner world with no limits to it. "It’s just literally being able to do anything... I would like to say, limitless in some ways." L: "it’s kind of constantly fun ... you never need to get bored because you can ... do anything."

M: "To be able to be so vividly imaginative and...actually go off into that world...I’m quite poor. My world is very small. I live alone. My children have grown up and they live far away...But...I don’t lack for company (chuckles) because...I can have it all going on, within me."

"...there are legitimate reasons to doubt even highly confident imagery self-report". link.springer.com/article/10.3... Ahem - enjoy this alphabet of hyperphantasia! Exhibit A: ...

I: "This would leave participants weary of thinking about the past because “if I go too deep ... they become really distressing because I’m right back... I know exactly how that situation was on every sensory level, and so I ... keep things at arm’s length."

J: Participants struggled with how not to be overwhelmed by negative memories. "How do you make that happen ... if the reality of those experiences is still there?"

"...there are legitimate reasons to doubt even highly confident imagery self-report". link.springer.com/article/10.3... Ahem - enjoy this alphabet of hyperphantasia! Exhibit A: ...

G: "People with really vivid imagination keep reliving things, keep remembering and seeing them." All participants reported slipping into memories against their will and being overwhelmed by them as though experiencing flashbacks.

H: "I've always felt like (said slowly) like part of the reason I struggle with difficult situations is because of, (pause) the- the video, like realistic, constant playing out in my head of events and times and this sort of never ever being able to forget because it’s always very, very real."

"...there are legitimate reasons to doubt even highly confident imagery self-report". link.springer.com/article/10.3... Ahem - enjoy this alphabet of hyperphantasia! Exhibit A: ...

E: "I find myself just distressed a lot, and a lot of the distress is not being able to switch that off, not being able to stop it being so vivid. I don't really mean switch it off, I mean, stop it being quite as vivid, because if it was just taken down a few notches, it would seem more positive."

F: "Once I've seen the thing, I cannot get it out of my mind. So, for years afterwards, I’ll be revisiting that scene ... it’s become as part of my kind of fabric of my thinking ... and it’s impossible to get rid of it."

"...there are legitimate reasons to doubt even highly confident imagery self-report". link.springer.com/article/10.3... Ahem - enjoy this alphabet of hyperphantasia! Exhibit A: ...

Exhibit C: P1, P4, and P7 noted how they could picture a relaxing beach scene which is often used in guided imagery, but that the imagery detracted from the relaxation, and was "unhelpful ... because it’s so real."

D: "I don’t like the intrusive stuff, like...a spider (disgusted expression)...I can see it. I can feel it. I can (shaking head)...it’s too much and it’s always negative stuff. That’s [the] part I don’t like (head shake)–because my imagination is so vivid, it just-it goes beyond- goes too far."

"...there are legitimate reasons to doubt even highly confident imagery self-report". link.springer.com/article/10.3... Ahem - enjoy this alphabet of hyperphantasia! Exhibit A: ...

Exhibit A: "It’s in here (pointing to head). Which is why it sounds wrong to say I can see it, (quote gesture with fingers) but ... the thing in my head (tapping head) is the same as the thing out there."

Exhibit B: "It’s always too real and feels too physically painful."

plato.stanford.edu Mental Imagery (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Fall 2021 Edition)

14 June

This is such an amazing and comprehensive resource on the research related to mental imagery up to 2014. Does anyone know how to contact Nigel J T Thomas, or have any information on him since 2014? He seems to have disappeared, I can't even find an obituary... plato.stanford.edu/archives/fal...

sciencedirect.comIndividuals with aphantasia show independent impairments in face perception and face memory, but not face matchingSome individuals with aphantasia, an absent or reduced ability to form visual imagery, report face recognition difficulties, and studies have shown ap…

13 June

Individuals with aphantasia show independent impairments in face perception and face memory, but not face matching By the wonderful Zoe Pounder et al: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

rr.peercommunityin.orgA comprehensive, multi-lab visual illusion test battery will exa...

12 June

Very excited to get started on this multi-lab intl collab investigating the role of mental imagery, schizotypy, and sensory sensitivity in visual perception! With @mmonzel.bsky.social, @tesvlee.bsky.social, @katechristodoulou.bsky.social, and Raquel Krempel: rr.peercommunityin.org/PCIRegistere...

newleftreview.orgLorna Finlayson, Irreversible — SidecarOn Britain’s universities.

31 May

The business model of higher education is real, and it's depressing for academics who have a love for knowledge and see the greedy leaders at the top who just see the bottom line. Students and staff suffer under this model. If you think it's all fine, you've got your head in the sand.

Benjamin Braun@benbraun.social

"short of the arrival of some kind of Noah’s Ark, the British university as we know it is destined for extinction sooner rather than later." Lorna Finlayson in Sidecar, @newleftreview.bsky.social. 4/4

29 May

So @mmonzel.bsky.social read my bsky thread and proposed we extend these ideas into a theory paper - and thus, this preprint was born! A unifying theory of aphantasia: Aphantasia as the inability to disengage from the external environment osf.io/preprints/ps...

osf.ioOSF

Dr Reshanne Reeder@kerblooee.bsky.social

With this new pub arguing that aphantasia is NOT an episodic memory condition, I agree that aphantasia must be defined, first and foremost, by a lack of imagery. However, aphantasia reduces the vividness of episodic memories in predictable ways. Here's another idea... 1/8 rdcu.be/eYxns

rdcu.beClient Challenge

21 May

When you have a feedback section at the end of your study and the person just writes "dope" 👌😁

21 May

From the article: "The ability to conjure mental imagery is a key aspect of being human." This is amusing, because I literally have a paper under review titled "mental imagery is not essential to being human" 🤣

The vOICe vision BCI 🧠🇪🇺@seeingwithsound.bsky.social

Seeing and imagining are handled by the same brain cells www.simonsfoundation.org/2026/05/12/s... "Researchers make advances in understanding how human brains are wired by pinning down how the same neurons are used for both imagining and seeing objects."

academic.oup.comFrom dots to faces: individual differences in visual imagery capacity predict the content of Ganzflicker-induced hallucinationsAbstract. A rapidly alternating red and black display known as Ganzflicker induces visual hallucinations that reflect the generative capacity of the visual

9 May

Paper now published in Neuroscience of Consciousness and led by @chkhaidze.bsky.social: From dots to faces: individual differences in visual imagery capacity predict the content of Ganzflicker-induced hallucinations academic.oup.com/nc/article/2...

Dr Reshanne Reeder@kerblooee.bsky.social

Thousands of people have provided written accounts of their Ganzflicker hallucinations, so @chkhaidze.bsky.social used NLP and machine learning techniques to explore the different content described by individuals across the imagery spectrum - what did she find? ... 1/5 arxiv.org/abs/2507.09011

arxiv.orgBeyond vividness: Content analysis of induced hallucinations reveals the hidden structure of individual differences in visual imageryA rapidly alternating red and black display known as Ganzflicker induces visual hallucinations that reflect the generative capacity of the visual system. Recent proposals regarding the imagery spectru...

Dr Reshanne Reeder reposted

Stephen Turner

@stephenturner.us

3 May

Free and open-source images, icons, and tools for creating scientific illustrations doi.org/10.59350/5zt... 🧪

doi.orgFree and open-source images, icons, and tools for creating scientific illustrationsPhylopic, NIH Bioart, Bioicons, Scidraw, Open Science Art, Health Icons, Servier Medical Art, Biodiversity Heritage Library, the Noun Project, Segment Anything, Excalidraw, draw.io, Biographics

Dr Reshanne Reeder reposted

The Psychologist

@psychmag.bsky.social

20 Apr

Replying to @psychmag.bsky.social

‘They can turn a normal city street into a jungle' Ella Rhodes spoke to Dr Reshanne Reeder @kerblooee.bsky.social (University of Liverpool), who researches extremes of mental imagery, individual differences in mental imagery, and their impacts. www.bps.org.uk/psychologist...

bps.org.uk‘They can turn a normal city street into a jungle' | BPSElla Rhodes spoke to Dr Reshanne Reeder (Lecturer in Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience, University of Liverpool), who researches extremes of mental imagery, individual differences in mental imagery,...