The role of subjective interoception in autobiographical deficits in aphantasia

Autobiographical memory deficits are well-documented in aphantasia, yet the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Emerging models suggest that interoception plays a crucial role in mental imagery, a key component of memory retrieval. In this study, we investigate the relationship between self-reported interoception, mental imagery, and autobiographical memory, with a specific focus on aphantasia. First, we examined whether interoceptive awareness differs between individuals with core aphantasia (n = 69), hypophantasia (n = 266) and typical imagers (n = 133). Our findings reveal that aphantasics report significantly lower interoceptive awareness across key subscales, including emotion awareness, body listening, and interoceptive attention. Secondly, a mediation analysis reveals that mental imagery mediates the relationship between interoceptive awareness and autobiographical memory, suggesting that interoception may contribute to memory recall indirectly through its influence on imagery. These findings provide novel empirical support for the idea that interoception is linked to both mental imagery and memory retrieval. The reduced interoceptive awareness observed in aphantasia may contribute to their known deficits in autobiographical memory, positioning aphantasia as a condition that extends beyond a lack of mental imagery to include altered interoceptive processing.