TY - JOUR T1 - The critical role of mental imagery in human emotion: insights from Aphantasia JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/726844 SP - 726844 AU - Marcus Wicken AU - Rebecca Keogh AU - Joel Pearson Y1 - 2019/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/08/06/726844.abstract N2 - One proposed function of imagery is to make thoughts more emotionally evocative through sensory simulations. Here we report a novel test of this theory utilizing a special population with no visual imagery: Aphantasia. After using multi-method verification of aphantasia, we show that this condition, but not the general population, is associated with a flat-line physiological response to frightening written, but not perceptual scenarios, supporting imagery’s critical role in emotion. ER -