Absence of shared representation in the visual cortex challenges unconscious imagery in aphantasia

Aphantasia is defined as the absence (or near-absence) of imagery, most commonly in but not necessarily limited to the visual modality (Zeman et al. 2025). While the neural and cognitive underpinnings of aphantasia remain hotly debated (see Zeman, 2024 for a recent review), a proposal that has recently gained attention is that people with aphantasia may have unconscious mental imagery (Nanay, 2021; Michel et al. 2025), meaning that despite lacking the experience associated with imagery, they may still possess the relevant neural activity. A recent CB article by Chang and colleagues (2025) reported finding “imageless imagery” in aphantasic subjects, thus seemingly supporting this view. However, we argue here that the representations found in aphantasic subjects by Chang and colleagues (2025), as well as in other studies (e.g., Liu et al., 2025), should not be viewed as unconscious imagery because they fail to show the perception-like pattern usually associated with mental imagery.