Music and Aphantasia
My dissertation on the lack of understanding of Aphantasia in UK Music Education and the need for further study on how it effects the musicians ability to Audiate. (2024)
Pete Brennan - Dissertation - BA Music (Hons) - 2024
Music without a ‘Mind’s Ear’: A call for further study into Auditory Aphantasia and Audiation in Music Education.
Abstract
Audiation can be defined as the action of imagining music in one’s head. Many educators describe this ability as fundamental to musicianship and place great importance on the need for students to develop this skill. This raises interesting questions when considering the neurodivergent condition Auditory-Aphantasia, (an inability to imagine sound) as its exhibitors would presumably be incapable of audiation. This could conceivably present a learning barrier to many individuals and deter them from seeking an education or indeed a career in music. The purpose of the research conducted within this dissertation is to a; aid in the effort of raising awareness of this little known condition, b; suggest that audiation represents an aspect of music education that could be inaccessible to some and c; highlight the lack of study into auditory aphantasia and its effects on musicianship. Through critical analysis of pre-existing data and findings reported in various neuroscience studies and music education papers, this dissertation ascertains that it is likely that individuals with aphantasia could struggle with audiation tasks. The relative obscurity of aphantasia is partly to blame for the lack of research regarding its auditory form within the fields of sound art. However, from examples of visual artists with the more typical visual form of the condition it could be suggested that a lack of audiation ability could possibly be overcome by adopting alternative or unorthodox methods of creative practice. The methods employed by some aphantasic visual artists seemingly work well enough for them to thrive but they would need to be adapted to work within a musical context. What this would entail, how well these methods would work as teaching tools and how they would be applied within music education are questions that require further study to answer.
Introduction
Individuals with the neurodiverse condition ‘aphantasia’ (Zeman et al 2015) reportedly cannot generate mental imagery in the part of their imaginations colloquially known as ‘the mind’s eye’ (Ganis & Schendan 2010). In the same manner, those exhibiting the condition in its auditory form cannot imagine sounds in their ‘mind’s ear’ (Adolphe 2013, Covington 2005, Gordon 1999) and are therefore incapable of generating a thought representation of sounds such as music, internal monologue, etc.
In light of this, one could easily imagine scenarios where musicians and composers with a lack of a mind’s ear could be at a disadvantage compared to their ‘auditory imaging’ (Graybill 2018, Hubbard and Ruppel 2021, Agnew et al 2015) or ‘audiating’ counterparts (Cross and Hiatt 2006, Nielsen 1998). Research into the implications of this condition within the context of musicianship and music education is thin on the ground and further study would be necessary to definitively conclude whether auditory aphantasia is a hindrance to a musician's development or not. A lack of consensus within the field of neuroscience when classifying aphantasia (Macpherson et al 2022 a, Holmes et al 2015, Yang 2022, Zeman et al 2020), coupled with the fact that the condition was almost entirely unnoticed for centuries (Zeman 2015), casts doubt as to whether it can even be designated as a learning difficulty.
In the world of music education however, many educators place great importance on students possessing and developing the skill of audiation (Adolphe 2013, Beatham 2014, Chilvers 2021, Cross and Hiatt 2006, Klickstein 2009, Mar 2014, Nielsen 1998, Reitan 2009), the ability to imagine music in their head, a term first introduced by Edwin E Gordon in his book Learning Sequences in Music (Gordon 1980). This skill would likely be impossible for the non-trivial number of individuals who exhibit auditory aphantasia (Hinwar and Lambert 2021).
Comparisons can be drawn between audiation and other visualisation methods employed by some educators as they are often used for similar purposes, such as dealing with performance anxiety, calming the mind or as a means of rehearsal (Guzman 2002, Kendle 2017, Will 2014, Williams 2016). However, the recounted experiences of some subjects with aphantasia assert that situations where they have been expected to visualise as part of a task have proved challenging, leaving them confused and dejected when they are inevitably incapable of completing something that their peers can with ease (Kendle 2017).
This dissertation refutes the claims of Edwin E Gordon and various other music educators about the fundamental importance of mental imagery in creative practice, by demonstrating that visually aphantasic individuals can still operate successfully within fields of visual art without the ability to visualise sight based imagery in their mind’s eye (Zeman 2021).
There is a distinct lack of study into how the auditory form of aphantasia affects musicality but given the overlap between visual and auditory aphantasia in subjects (Hinwar & Lambert 2021), it is reasonable to suggest that it is possible for these subjects to overcome their lack of mental auditory imagery and thrive in the world of sound art just as those who lack visual imagery have succeeded in visual art.
Through a qualitative research approach, drawing from the fields of neuroscience and music education, this dissertation critically analyses the experiences of individuals with the condition, within the framework of creative practice and education, cross-referencing them with studies into the skill of audiation. From this, conclusions can be drawn that these individuals could potentially be physiologically incapable of performing some if not all of the audiation tasks that some music educators regularly assign their students.
This underlines the need for further study in this area to ascertain whether auditory aphantasia has a detrimental effect on the subjects ability to audiate and if it does, what changes need to be made in music education to accommodate the unique needs of these individuals.
Chapter 1: Aphantasia - Definitions of Terms
Aphantasia
[noun]: ‘the inability to form mental images of objects that are not present’. (OXFORD LANGUAGES. 2023).
Aphantasia is a little known neurological condition where the subject who exhibits it has little to no ability to voluntarily generate mental imagery in their mind’s eye (Holmes et al 2015, Zeman et al 2015). In its auditory form, a subject cannot imagine a representation of sound in their mind as voices, internal monologue, music, etc (Hinwar and Lambert 2021).
To understand aphantasia, one first must understand the normal functions of the brain of which aphantasiacs are lacking. Neurotypical individuals can generate various forms of mental imagery in their ‘mind’s eye’, the most commonly known of which is ‘visual imagery (Zeman et al 2015).
This ability allows a subject to imagine and/or manipulate pictures in their head and experience some manner of the sensation of actually ‘seeing’ those images even though they are not physically real. This is colloquially referred to as 'seeing with the mind's eye' (Ganis & Schendan 2010). Aphantasics lack, either partially or totally, this ability to voluntarily generate visual imagery in their imagination.
Aphantasia as a term was first attributed to this condition in the research publication ‘Lives without imagery – Congenital aphantasia’ (Zeman et al 2015) via the University of Exeter and describes aphantasia as ‘a variation on the human experience’ rather than a neurological disorder (Zeman et al 2015). The ‘Mind’s Eye’ is a figurative term that is commonly used to describe the non physical space in which these imagined visual images appear to the subject (Cambridge Dictionary Online 2023).
The study outlined in this paper looked at subjects who had self-reported either a severely limited capacity for mental imagery or no mental imagery at all and identified two distinct variations of the condition which they designated as ‘congenital aphantasia’ and ‘acquired aphantasia’ respectively (Zeman et al 2015). The latter of these is in reference to a case where the subject had previously possessed the ability to visualise in their mind’s eye but had lost it through brain injury or other means. This dissertation mostly pertains to cases of the former ‘congenital aphantasia’, where subjects self-report a lifelong impairment or absence of visual imagery, although many if not all of the points addressed are still relevant to the latter variation of the condition.
Zeman’s study also details accounts of subjects who report incredibly vivid and lifelike mental imagery, indicating that these conditions exist on a continuum. The condition experienced by those that occupy this opposite side of the mental imagery spectrum has been named hyperphantasia (Macpherson et al 2022 b, Pearson 2019, Zeman et al 2015). Subjects were recruited to take part in the study from volunteers who scored low when completing the Vividness Of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (Marks 1973) online via ‘The Eye’s Mind’ project that was launched by Exeter University in 2015 (University of Exeter 2015).
Historically, relatively few publications have addressed the subject of visual imagery impairment. In 1880, Francis Galton reported the findings of his ‘breakfast-table survey’ experiment and demonstrated that the vividness of his test subjects' imagination varied widely with some even self-reporting ‘no power of visualising’ at all (Galton 1880). After this initial discovery however, very little work was done for over a century in this field, culminating in the condition not being formally named until 2015 by Zemen and his collaborators.
Aphantasia: Classification
There is some disharmony among experts as to how to accurately classify aphantasia from a neurological standpoint with some actively discouraging the term ‘mental disorder' in favour of the term ‘neurodiversity’ (Zeman et al. 2020, p.18) while another unapologetically refers to aphantasia as a ‘mental illness’ (Yang 2022). Others infer that while aphantasia in most cases does not encroach on the subject’s capability to function normally in everyday life, it is feasible that in certain extreme scenarios it could cause levels of distress that could potentially meet the clinical requirements to be classified as a mental disorder (Macpherson et al 2022 b). Some have argued that mental imagery plays an important role in the performance of important neurological functions such as memory, future planning, navigation and decision making and that a lack of it could feasibly have a detrimental effect on those with aphantasia (Holmes et al 2015).
Aphantasia is undetectable to the naked eye, making it difficult to diagnose from mere observation. In this way aphantasia could be said to resemble the many non-visible disabilities and neurological conditions that are well noted in modern society (Gov.uk 2020). As the fields of neurology and psychology have yet to settle on a fixed set of terms, for the purposes of this paper the term ‘condition’ (Arcangeli 2023, Lorenzatti 2023) is used throughout to avoid confusion.
As a recent addition to the field of neuroscience, relatively few studies have been conducted into aphantasia and the condition is still largely unknown to the general public. However, organisations such as the Aphantasia Network are working tirelessly to address this latter point with an aim to increase awareness of the condition worldwide (Aphantasia Network 2023).
If aphantasia occurs innately in human beings then it would appear to be a condition that had gone unnoticed by medical science for centuries, so it stands to reason that without the spreading of awareness, many cases could easily remain unknown to medical science for the lifetime of the individual subjects. No fixed collective term has arisen for individuals with aphantasia again possibly due to the recency of this field of inquiry. Some in online forums refer to themselves as ‘Aphants’ (Aphantasia Network 2023, Reddit 2023) whereas academic publications seem to prefer ‘Aphantasic’ (Andrillion et al 2020, Dance et al 2021) which for the sake of clarity has been adopted in this paper.
Self diagnosis is crucial to the study of aphantasia as cases are primarily discovered by the subject themselves after they hear descriptions of the condition that resonate with their own experience so they volunteered themselves for analysis and study (Zeman et al 2015). This point has attracted some criticism to aphantasia studies as some have claimed that the research relies too heavily on patient testimony of lived experience rather than empirical data (Blomkvist 2022). Some advances are being made however in terms of generating useful data via rigorous and objective methods of measurement instead of an over-reliance on self-diagnosis and questionnaires (Pearson 2014). Methods such as testing binocular rivalry (Bradley 2012, Keogh and Pearson 2018, Pearson et al 2011, Keogh et al 2021), pupil light response (Andrillion et al 2022) and measuring mental rotation proficiency (Jacob 2018) have all furthered the efforts of neuroscientists to build an empirical framework for study into imagery neurodivergent conditions.
Multisensory and Auditory Aphantasia
The term ‘multisensory aphantasia’ was suggested in a 2020 paper to describe a form of the condition where subjects exhibit limitations in generating representative mental imagery in two or more of the traditional senses (Andrillion et al 2020). While aphantasia typically describes a condition relating to mental imagery of a visual kind, it has been shown that human beings can generate a representation of other sensory information within their imaginations. These can include experiencing kinesthetic sensations such as imagined motor functions, motion, and spatial information. Human beings can often also imagine an array of tactile sensations as well as a sense of smell and taste. Most crucial for this paper however, is the ability to imagine sound in the form of auditory imagery (Graybill 2018, Hubbard and Ruppel 2021, Agnew et al 2015).
Observations seem to suggest that those with visual imagery impairment are often lacking vividness in the other senses also, most typically hearing (Eardley et al 2023). One study has even suggested that the vast majority of subjects with aphantasia exhibit it in its multisensory form, reporting that 93% of those surveyed reported limitations to their imagery in at least one other sensory area other than visual (Dance et al 2021). Another study showed that 29 of the 34 aphantasics surveyed also reported symptoms of ‘anuaralia’ or auditory aphantasia (Hinwar & Lambert 2021). Admittedly this is only a small sample size but the findings indicate an overlap between those with image based and audio based aphantasia of 82%. Similarly, of the 29 who reported poor vividness of auditory imagery, 28 were from the aphantasia group with only one appearing in the control group of neurotypicals.
The term multisensory aphantasia was suggested to simplify discourse when dealing with the variations of aphantasia and avoid the inevitable confusion that would occur if novel terms were to be created for each of them individually (Pearson et al 2022). This would mean rejecting terms like anuaralia (Hinwar & Lambert 2021) in favour of referring to conditions firstly with the sense that is lacking followed by aphantasia as a suffix (Pearson et al 2022). Using this terminology, a lack or absence of sound based imagery would be called ‘auditory aphantasia’, a lack or absence of physical touch based imagery would be ‘tactile aphantasia’, etc. For the purposes of this paper, when referencing aphantasia that manifests as a poor imagining of sound, the term ‘auditory aphantasia’ (Pearson et al 2022) has been used rather than ‘anuaralia’ (Hinwar & Lambert 2021) to avoid confusion..
It could be suggested from the findings outlined previously in this chapter that a small subset of individuals in society would find it either difficult or impossible to imagine sound in their minds, including music. An argument could be made that this in turn would affect the abilities of these individuals to successfully engage in activities that require them to imagine music, such as the skill of ‘audiation’ (Gordon 1999).
Audiation: Definitions of Terms
Audiation in western contemporary musical theory describes the ways a musician thinks about sound and is often considered as an important tool in a musicians skillset. [Audiation] ‘takes place when we hear and comprehend music for which the sound is no longer or may never have been present’ (Gordon 2012).
Audiation has been argued by some as a fundamental and integral part of intonation (Adolphe 2013), an important skill for many musicians (Graybill 2018), particularly those playing instruments without fixed pitches or frets (Marchuk 2012, Weidner 2020). Intonation in a musical context describes the player's ability to accurately find and perform a correct pitch of a given note or notes on their instrument or with their singing voice (Oxford English Dictionary. 2023). This discipline is performed by ear and is a skill that musicians are encouraged to learn and develop in music education in establishments that focus on western contemporary orchestral music (Dalby 2017). Excluding microtonal musical forms and styles (Whitman 1970), western music theory is commonly built around twelve tone equal temperament (Hass 2021) which utilises firmly set pitches for each of the twelve tones allowing multiple instruments to play in tune with each other which in turn makes the orchestration of large ensemble pieces possible. It is standard practice for most western contemporary orchestras to tune the A above middle C note to 440 Hz (Edwards 1970) and musicians playing instruments without fixed pitch positions; i.e fretless stringed instruments such as the violin or horned instruments such as the trombone (Marchuk 2012, Weidner 2020), are expected to find these notes instantaneously through a combination of rigorously practised muscle memory and ear training.
Audiation is a term first posited by the influential scholar of music education Edwin E. Gordon as early as 1975 after he began investigating and measuring musical potential in his subjects (Gerhardstein 2002) and although his methods drew their fair share of criticism in his lifetime, he defended them ardently throughout (Gordon 2011). Claiming that ‘audiation is the basis of music aptitude’ Gordon devised the test ‘Advanced Measures of Music Audiation’ [AMMA] (Gordon 1989) which he claimed could measure audiation ability in adults as an indicator of musical aptitude. He proposed that accurate predictions can be made about a subject's potential for musical ability and therefore their success in terms of future musical achievements by measuring their levels of proficiency in audiation with this test (Saunders 1991). The validity of the AMMA test is contested however with some suggesting that further research is needed into how to measure audiation ability (Kopiez et al 2022).
Gordon uses the term ‘Audiation’ to broadly describe how a subject thinks about music in one’s mind both during and after the fact, but he does make many references to hearing music one has ‘heard performed sometime in the past’ in the mind, indicating that the ‘Mind’s Ear’ plays a part in the process he is describing (Gordon 2007). Many assume that audiation is an innate skill that all individuals possess and musicians merely finely tune it with study and practice. ‘...Myriad performers use imaging to rehearse compositions in their minds. They’ll internally “hear” a piece of music…However, imaging isn’t a trick reserved solely for elite musicians; everyone uses imaging in daily life’ (Klickstein 2009).
‘The Mind’s Ear’
Those with auditory aphantasia lack the ability to create ‘auditory imagery’ (Graybill 2018, Lima et al 2015, Hari 2002) which describes the phenomena of imagining sound in the ‘Mind’s Eye’ space. When referring to this space in an auditory or sonic context, commenters often use the colloquial term ‘Mind’s Ear’ (Adolphe 2013, Covington 2005, Gordon 1999). The ‘Mind’s Ear’ has been used to describe imagined auditory thought processes such as one’s internal monologue as well as the space where musicians and non-musicians alike perform the task of audiation (Adolphe 2013). Some sources refer to the phenomena of hearing imagined music in one’s mind as hearing with the ‘inner ear’ (Beatham 2014). Inner ear is used figuratively in this context and describes the ‘mind’s ear’ as opposed to the medical science description of the cochlea and the semicircular canals within the physical ear (NHS Trust 2023).
Aphantasics frequently express their confusion when hearing these terms; [BM] ‘I always thought that 'Mind's Eye' and ‘Mind’s Ear’...etc were convenient ways of describing more abstract experiences common to all people. I never thought that some people actually saw things, heard things...etc in their minds’ (cited in Kendle 2017).
The ability to generate musical sound in the mind has been called many things over the years including ‘musical imagery’ (Gates 2021, Gelding et al 2015), ‘auditory imagery’, (Graybill 2018, Hubbard and Ruppel 2021, Agnew et al 2015), and ‘inner hearing’ (Covington 2005, Johnson and Klonoski 1998) to name a few. Studies looking at inner hearing were conducted as far back as the early part of the twentieth century (Agnew 1922 a). Recent studies suggest musicians often possess strong abilities of generating auditory imagery. Of the 76 musicians who were asked in one study to rate the vividness of their mental hearing, more than half reported that their auditory imagery was so vividly realistic that it was ‘as clear as actual hearing’. This paper also suggested that many educators assume that ‘all incoming students will possess some imagery’ (Gates 2021).
It was said of German composer Robert Schumann (1810-1856) that ‘auditory imagery was the most important factor in his musical genius’. It is claimed that ‘his imagery was not only vivid, but accurate and profuse’ and that it was ‘remarkably realistic in character…It was so vivid that he retained tones in almost their original clearness long after he had first heard them’ (Agnew 1922 b). The 1920s pianist Ethel Newcomb claimed to map out many different elements of her musical composition in her head using auditory mental imagery. She credited a process that she called ‘inward singing’ as a vital element of her artistic expression and professed that hearing a phrase of music through in her mind once ‘was of far more value than playing it a dozen times’ (Newcomb 1921). Conversely, the twentieth century composer John Cage claimed not to use inner hearing at all saying ‘I don't hear the music I write. I write in order to hear the music I haven't yet heard’ (Cage 1989).
The perceived ‘realness’ of a subjects ‘Mind’s Ear’ has been evidenced by a study that suggests when test subjects imagine music in their heads during brain scans, the regions of the brain associated with processing auditory stimulus reacted in the same manner as they do when hearing real sounds (Chang et al 2018). This corroborates claims made by other academic researchers who claim that the vividness of auditory imagery can be comparable in realism to real hearing (Janata 2012). There is little consensus as to what auditory imagery really is (Halpern 2015) but its importance to a musician’s skill set is often inferred as ‘vital’ (Gates 2021).
Chapter 2: Audiation in music education
Edwin E Gordon claims that audiation is a fundamental part of musical education and should precede musical literacy as a necessity in a musician's development. At length he compares learning musical composition to learning language and posits that ‘audiation’ serves a comparable function to music as thought does to language. Using this analogy he repeatedly suggests that hearing music in one’s head is an essential skill that must be developed if one is to become musically literate (Gordon 1999).
Audiation is revered by many educators (Covington 2005, Pedersen 2021, Redgate 2020) with some arguing it is ‘an essential quality for any practical career in music’ (Chilvers 2021) and that ‘if there is no inner conceptualization of what you hear, you will not be able to write it down or verbalise it in any terminology’ (Nielsen 1998). Another said ‘A musical ear is widely accepted as an essential ingredient in the education of successful music students…Most music educators believe that without a well-developed ear it's impossible for a musician to function on a professional level as a teacher, conductor, performer, or composer’ (Cross and Hiatt 2006). Audiation training has even been made mandatory in Norwegian music education due to the importance placed on their students having the ‘ability to imagine sound.’ (Reitan 2009).
One educator who reveres audiation and readily teaches it to his students is music scholar and composer Bruce Adolphe, who has authored several books in the field of music education and composition including ‘The Mind's Ear : Exercises for Improving the Musical Imagination for Performers, Composers, and Listeners’ (Adolphe 2013).
In this book Adolphe describes audiating as imagining ‘vividly how music sounds, so vividly that it can be heard in their [the students'] mind as if it were really being played.’ He goes on to suggest that this skill is a necessary and fundamentally integral part of any musician's repertoire. ‘To be able to hear music in silence while reading a part or score is an essential skill for a professional musician’ (Adolphe 2013). Adolphe seems to be suggesting here that without the ability to audiate, one could never become a musician at a professional level.
This ability to use audiation to aid score reading is another point that educators have fixated on; ‘...at advanced levels it is also necessary to connect audiation skills with the ability to read music…audiating what is seen in notation without physically hearing any sound’ (Cross and Hiatt 2006). Many skilled and accomplished musicians claim to be able to ‘hear’ a printed score clearly in their ‘Mind’s Ear’ when reading it and on occasion the development of this skill is encouraged (Redgate 2020).
In the preface of his book ‘The Mind’s Ear’, Adolphe recounts an anecdote about one of his students describing a condition that one could argue closely resembles the self reported cases of auditory aphantasia. When asked to compose a piece of music in his head using his imagination, the student is perplexed as to how he could compose without using an instrument stating that he cannot hear or imagine music in his head. Adolphe goes on to suggest that this student and others merely suffer from a lack of development in the discipline of audiation and makes a compelling case for musicians to train and nurture this skill. The students account however seems to mirror that of an account by an aphantasic acting student who described a similar exchange with their teacher, [D.G.] ‘I was doing a course on method acting - when our mentor suggested a scenario and that we should picture it. I realised everyone could - except me’ (cited in Kendle 2017). It could be argued that the struggle to audiate exhibited by this student was in fact not due to underdeveloped skills and a lack of application, but rather is evidence of an undiagnosed neurological condition.
Ceding to this point begs the question: if this student did have auditory aphantasia and therefore lacked the capacity to perform these audiation exercises, would forcing him to try and develop skills of which he is incapable of be considered reasonable? Further study is needed to determine how much auditory aphantasia affects audiation in music students before a conversation can be had about alternative teaching methods and the potential need for reasonable adjustments (Equality Act 2010, Gov.uk, Coleman et al 2019). As study into aphantasia is heavily reliant on testimony and self-diagnosis, a lot that is known about the condition affects on a subjects education comes from the recounted experiences of the subjects themselves.
One student training to be an opera singer spoke of the struggles they faced when realising they could not perform similar tasks to that of their fellow students and argues that aphantasia acted as a barrier to their learning.
[MH] ‘I never understood until now that musicians can actually “hear” a melody in their head ... There are things that would be considered prerequisites and absolutely essential in order to have a professional singing career. But in my head, I hear nothing at all, ever. My voice teacher said I was the hardest working student he ever had and I made little to zero improvement in musicianship skills…ear training, sight singing, pitches, etc’ (cited in Kendle 2017).
In this singer's view, auditory aphantasia has had a detrimental effect on their musical education by impeding their progress compared to their contemporaries.
There are other examples of students raising their concerns about having either no ability or a poor ability to audiate. In some cases the author inferred as Adolphe seemed to that this is because of a lack of application on the part of that student. ‘She had resigned herself to the fact that she cannot “audiate” very well’ (Reichenbach 2017). Cases such as these, where music students show an inability to audiate, seem to be rare. This could be explained by an innate lack of predisposition to music given that these individuals lack the ability to imagine music in their heads.
Visualisation techniques in Music Education.
Many fields of education have adopted various visualisation methods and techniques as a tool to train students and aid them in their comprehension and understanding of subject material (Guzman 2002, Kendle 2017, Will 2014, Williams 2016). Accounts from those with aphantasia frequently recall specific incidents from their education where they were asked to ‘visualise’ something in their mind's eye. The responses commonly read like the following, [T.M] ‘I have heard people say, “Picture it in your head…” I thought that people were talking metaphorically’ (Kendle 2017).
Gerald Klickstein’s book ‘The Musician’s Way’ features many examples of visualisation being used as an educational tool in music education. In one exercise, the author repeatedly instructs the reader to perform mental tasks that those with auditory aphantasia could not possibly achieve. ‘...repeatedly sing the example while you imagine playing it… Feel your fingers depress the imaginary keys, mentally hear the sound of a piano’. In this exercise students are evidently expected to ‘hear’ music in their head repeatedly. In the next stage students are expected to put these techniques into practice when physically playing. ‘As you begin to play, imagine one measure ahead of the one that you’re playing’. The author summarises the importance of developing audiation ability for musicians by making a prediction of the students future practice and reliance on their mental imagery. ‘In due course, you’ll image so easily that you’ll be able to learn and rehearse music while riding a bus or sitting in a café… you’ll use imaging to practise mentally’. Klickstein goes on to suggest that a student can develop their audiation skill to a point where they can add harmonies to the melodies in their mind. ‘...When imaging, vocalise not only the melody of a piece but also mix in aspects of its accompaniment’ (Klickstein 2009).
Other advocates for these methods argue they help the students prepare mentally before completing a task by ‘visualising’ themselves performing it successfully or as a means to map out the steps in advance (Buza and Shatri 2017, Rodriguez 1991, Loerke et al 2011). This is similar to methods reportedly adopted by some professional athletes who imagined themselves winning a race or lifting a trophy before competing (Katz et al 2005). The aim of this is apparently to build the necessary confidence, positivity and self-belief that is required to have success at high levels of sporting endeavour (Newmark 2012, Suinn 1997). Similar methods of ‘mental rehearsal’ (Klickstein 2009, Trusheim 1991) are often adopted in musical performance as a means to overcoming performance anxiety or stage fright (Buswell 2006, Covington 2005, Huang 2011, Quist 2015, Sharon 2016). The old cliche of ‘picturing your audience in their underwear’ is another well known strategy for setting a performer's or public speaker’s mind at ease (Fasbinder 2019).
Like the athlete who visualises themselves crossing the finish line first or lifting a trophy victoriously, a musician might conjure imagery of a successful performance. ‘Visualise that before you go on stage, and in time it will come true’ (Sharon 2016). Commonly, the exercises that performers are encouraged to employ seem to focus on creating positivity and self confidence by imagining a level of success. ‘Visualise yourself being able to complete your task’ (Philips 2011).
The examples of musicians who use visualisation techniques before a performance draws obvious comparisons with those of the athletes as these individuals will face similar expectations to perform in front of an audience. However with artistic disciplines such as music, visualisation techniques are also employed as a means to spark creativity by some educators and performers (Isaacson 2023). Some are simply pictures that the students will call to mind as visual aid to their composing process as they construct a piece of music in their mind using audiation (Adolphe 2013). Other methods implore the performer to call to mind scenarios and memories and build on those narratives to construct creative ideas that they can then hold in their mind throughout a performance or use to create a basis for the artistic story they wish to tell (Sharon 2016).
These methods would clearly be of little use for a performer with aphantasia trying to cope with pre-performance trepidation as they would be incapable of imagining success or, in fact, anything at all. Presumably, a more suitable means of dealing with stage fright would have to be employed by those individuals in these scenarios.
Chapter 3: Aphantasia, Artistry and Education: Case Studies and Findings
Aphantasics in Artistic Fields
It could be reasonable to assume that those with a congenital condition that manifests as an inability to imagine sound would not be drawn into fields of music and sound design. Equally, it would follow that those with the more common form of visual aphantasia might shy away from visually creative work given their inability to think in pictures.
Indeed these intuitions seem to be sound as a study on 2000 subjects with aphantasia appears to indicate that aphantasics are drawn to STEM fields of study rather than creative vocations and were ‘more likely to work in computing, mathematics and science’ (Zeman 2015). Whereas those on the opposite side of the visualisation spectrum who scored high on the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) test (Marks 1973), a condition known as hyperphantasia (Macpherson et al 2022 b, Pearson 2019, Zeman et al 2015), had an increased likelihood of working in creative fields like design or the arts (Zeman et al 2020).
This all seems to suggest that in art education, including that of music, encountering aphantasics would be a rare occurrence, it is not however entirely unheard of.
Music Education and Aphantasia
Writer and aphantasic Alan Kendle conducted a host of interviews with other aphantasics to ask them about their observations and experiences of living with the condition. He curated and published these accounts in his book ‘Aphantasia: Experiences, Perceptions and Insights’ (Kendle 2017).
The 18 individuals interviewed in his book, and Kendle himself, are all lacking in visual imagery. 10 out of these 19 report zero ability to generate auditory imagery, 7 report a weak or sporadic ability to imagine sound and only 2 report they can ‘hear’ sounds in the mind voluntarily. Of those who report full or some ability to create auditory imagery, 3 claim they can ‘sing’ a song in their mind ‘in their own voice’ as an internal monologue but cannot generate a representation of the instrumentation of the song or the original artist's voice.
These findings are consistent with a larger study which seems to suggest that the vast majority of those who self-report low vividness or absent visual imagery also report similar levels of auditory imagery (Hinwar & Lambert 2021). With a recent study suggesting that perhaps as many as 3.9% of the general population could be aphantasic (Dance 2022), it would be reasonable to assume that music educators could invariably encounter students with auditory aphantasia, although it would be reasonable to expect the number to be lower than populations 3.9% as aphantasics seem to gravitate to more technical fields rather than creative ones (Zeman et al 2020).
Regarding the rare cases where aphantasics do enrol in an art course, can they go on to be successful, or would a lack of mental imagery hinder their progress irrevocably? Can a non-imaging person become an artist? To answer these questions, it would be reasonable to first consider the visual form of aphantasia, as it is the most commonly known, and look at examples of its manifestation in those who work in fields of visual art.
Visual Artists with Aphantasia
Ed Catmull is one of the co-founders of the animated motion picture studio Pixar who eventually rose to the position of studio president alongside his position as manager of Walt Disney Animation Studios until his retirement in 2018. He is widely renowned within animation and film industry circles for his artistic innovation and revolutionary work with 3D graphics (Gallagher 2019). He has self-reported aphantasia and claims to be completely lacking in the ability to generate visual mental imagery. He discovered this late in his life after already achieving his incredible success as a visual artist.
In a 2019 interview with the BBC, Catmull explained how was enthralled by the discovery that most people could visualise and during his time at Pixar, he conducted an experiment to satisfy his curiosity regarding his newly discovered condition. He requested 540 members of the staff in these animation departments to take the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) test (MARKS. 1973) and sorted the findings into three categories; Technical Artists, Traditional Artists and Production managers.
The evidence gathered in his admittedly non-academic study repeatedly suggests a significant difference in thought process between those with aphantasia and those without. Catmull reported that ‘some animators could form mental images so strong they would open their eyes and the image would still be there, so they could practically trace what they could see’ (cited in Gallagher 2019).
If we accept that this self-reported account of maintaining a superimposed image over a canvas and subsequently tracing it onto the paper is in fact a real skill that this particular artist can utilise, it could easily be argued as an advantage to visual artists that aphantasics would not possess. It could also be reasonable to compare this ability to a musician hearing music in their mind before they physically perform it.
Catmull goes on to recount speaking to two unnamed animators that had both worked on the animated feature ‘Frozen’. One claims he ‘can see an entire movie in his head and play it backwards and forwards and never needs to see a movie twice because he can visualise it’ which seems to describe the condition found on the opposite of the visual imagery spectrum hyperphantasia (Macpherson et al 2022 b, Pearson 2019, Zeman et al 2015) while the second simply reports not being able to ‘see anything at all’.
It could be suggested that the former has an obvious advantage when operating in a visual art discipline as they can instantaneously recall and manipulate clear pictures in their mind. It could equally be argued that the latter artist (who seems to be reporting the symptoms of congenital aphantasia) has an innate disadvantage in this regard compared to their contemporaries yet has managed to achieve a comparatively equal level of success in animation in spite of it. This seems to suggest that the visual form of aphantasia does not completely inhibit a subject’s ability to create visual art and build a career in a visual artform.
Catmull goes on to claim that another notable name in Disney's illustrious history of animation, Oscar-winner Glen Keane, the hand-drawn animator who created the character Ariel for the studio's 1989 animated feature ‘The Little Mermaid’ (Clements and Musker 1989) also self-reports having aphantasia (cited in Gallagher 2019).
These two animators are certainly the most high profile examples of visual artists with aphantasia but they are by no means the only cases. After first publishing his findings on aphantasia in 2015, Dr Adam Zeman claims to have been contacted by at least 150 artists who self-report having the condition along with some who work in other creative fields (Zeman 2021).
Zeman became fascinated with artists with neurodiverse conditions and started the ‘Eye’s Mind’ project through Exeter University. This project culminated in the ‘Extreme Imagination Conference’ April of 2019 where, along with a host of lectures from prominent figures from the world of neuroscience including Zeman himself, showcased the art of 19 individuals from both ends of the visualisation neurodiversity spectrum. At the conference, artists with aphantasia spoke about their experiences, challenges and their artistic processes to shine a light on the condition and how it affects their art (MacKisack 2019).
One such artist Elina Cerla spoke of how she overcame the condition to allow her to depict human figures in her artwork. She claims that studying anatomy and gaining an intimate knowledge of the structure and functionality of the human body has given her an insight into the way a human subject can be constructed in an artistic composition without needing to imagine the subject in her mind (Cerla 2019).
This approach was cited as the method for achieving the exact same outcome by Czech painter and photographer Karolina Koblen in an interview with the Aphantasia Network (Koblen 2021). Koblen, a formally trained artist (Koblen 2023), recalls noticing early on in her education that the other students could do stuff that she couldn't and said that something felt there was ‘something off’ with the way her ‘brain functioned’ compared to others. She details the many ways she has had to overcome her lack of a mind’s eye, indicating the great importance of reference images and photographs to her craft (Koblen 2021).
This again is echoed by Cerla in an article she wrote for the Aphantasia Network in 2022 where she recalls hosting a workshop on creating visual art with aphantasia. Cerla outlines the methods she uses to create and describes how an aphantsic can learn to draw and paint in an educational setting. These alternate or adjusted methods of teaching could aid in formulating a pedagogy for teaching those with aphantasia creative practice.
Along with using reference photographs in absence of a mind’s eye, Cerla explains how her process is more explorative and improvisational. She starts with simple lines and edits them retrospectively, incrementally moving parts around until she is happy with what she has (Cerla 2022).
This again is similar to a method that Koblen claims is integral to her process in which she works with an image in the digital space and manipulates it until she is happy with how it looks (Koblen 2021). This process in turn is remarkably similar to that of photorealistic artist and influencer Temi Danso who self-reports having aphantasia. In one of her youtube videos Danso shows how she uses photoshop to change the hair colour of the subject she is about to paint and when she is happy with the colour palette she can then easily find the colour on the canvas (Danso 2021).
Cerla calls this method the ‘feedback loop’, where an artist will physically change elements and build their creative art through a process of incremental synthesis rather than by imagining a visual idea (Cerla 2022).
This process of improvisation and discovering the artistic work along the way is also how British artist Michael Chance described his process when he was interviewed at the Extreme Imagination Conference in 2019. ‘I must physically work on a drawing or painting in order for my imagination to become visually manifest. I often start a picture with no intention and certainly no end goal; it materialises in an improvisatory way’ (Chance 2019).
There are many more examples of visual artists who operate within their fields successfully in spite of them self-reporting aphantasia, such as Alice Coles (known as Hullo Alice), a watercolour artist who shared videos of her creative process to her 315K followers on Youtube before retiring in November 2023, racking up nearly 23 million views (Coles 2023 a). In spite of her aphantasia she had built this network, achieved 2 bachelor degrees in visual art disciplines and gained an Artist Residency at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in 2016 (Coles 2023 b). Others include NFT artist Tony Babel (Babel 2021), animator Jamie Hensley-Davies, known as Jamie Right Meow (Hensley-Davies 2018) and video game concept artist Irshad Karim, known as Uncomfortable (Karim 2021) who also designs his own series of comic books.
We can conclude from these examples that generating visual imagery in the “Mind’s Eye" is not necessary to work in visually artistic fields but rather those with visual aphantasia, by adopting alternative strategies, can potentially succeed in these fields. It would be reasonable to suggest by comparison that those with auditory aphantasia would face similar disadvantages to creating sound art but also would be equally capable of overcoming these shortcomings to achieve success. However, there is less evidence to suggest that this is the case. This could be explained by a combination of factors including a lack of formal diagnosis and the tendency for most individuals with aphantasia to shy away from creative practice. Equally, it could be the case that lacking a mind’s ear is as detrimental to musical practice as Gordon and his counterparts seem to infer. The case of Neesa Sunar is insufficient evidence on its own but is relevant nonetheless as the experiences she retells of dealing with auditory aphantasia are comparable to that of those on the visualisation side for which there is far more evidence.
Neesa Sunar
Neesa Sunar is an accomplished classical violist who achieved a Bachelors of Music (BM) degree in viola performance from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. Her promising career as a viola player was cut short by health issues but not before she had briefly operated at a professional level in the world of orchestral music. She now works as a music educator, mental health professional and a writer in New York, USA (Sunar 2023).
Whilst studying for the first of her degrees Neesa discovered she has multi-sensory aphantasia and is incapable of generating mental images of any kind. This includes being incapable of synthesising sound in her ‘mind’s ear’, suggesting that it is impossible for her to audiate as Gordon described the skill (Gordon 2001, Gordon 2007).
When interviewed in 2022 Sunar recounts being bemused during her higher education when one of her teachers had implored her to ‘Tell a story with the music’ and to ’hear the music in your mind first, before playing it. If you can hear it, you can play it’ (Sunar 2022). This is reminiscent of Adolpe’s earlier anecdote (Adolphe 2013) and is yet another example of a teacher of music inferring that audiation is an important factor in musicality.
Her account is also similar to the earlier examples of visualisation techniques being employed in music education as Sunar was encouraged by her teacher to prepare herself for a musical performance by imagining herself on stage and to visualise success. Again she reports bemusement when recalling these exercises and suggests a more materialistic approach to her understanding of musical technique and performance. ‘Isn’t music just about physicality? Perfect technique and intonation? What is this stuff with expression?’
Sunar claims she has had to hone her craft in an atypical manner compared to her contemporaries to circumnavigate her neurodiversity. She infers that she has to rely on the formal and technical aspects of her musical training if she wishes to ‘...tell a story with the music’ rather than generating the sound first in her imagination. This adds credence to Alan Kendle’s claim that the mental world of aphantasics ‘is based more upon description than imagery’ (Kendle 2017). She talks of maintaining ‘relaxed posture’, and ‘intonation’ to ensure control of sound and suggests that her ‘body knows’ when she is in tune (Sunar 2022).
This reliance on physical technique is arguably comparable to the account of the aphantasic opera singer in Alan Kendle’s book known as MH who proclaims that all the singing that they do is ‘strictly muscle memory’ (cited in Kendle 2017). This is also reminiscent of the alternative methods of creativity employed by the aforementioned visual artists who use reference photos and improvisation to discover the picture as they go.
It has been shown that there is often an overlap between manifestations of visual and auditory aphantasia and that both conditions generate similar forms of confusion in their exhibitors when faced with visualisation tasks. It has also been shown that those with the visual form of the condition can often overcome it and succeed in visual art fields. Thus, it could be argued when examining the account of Sunar’s experience with auditory aphantasia that it may be possible for those with auditory aphantasia to learn to operate successfully as musicians without the ability to audiate in the manner suggested by Gordon (Gordon 2007). It could also be reasonable to suggest that someone with the same condition but lacking Sunar’s conviction and determination could be discouraged at an early age and quit out of frustration. This point again underlines the need for further study into aphantasia in music education to ensure that these individuals are not being needlessly excluded from the world of musical practice.
Conclusion
It can be concluded from the findings that have been discussed within this dissertation that there is a non-zero chance that music educators may encounter students that cannot perform audiation tasks due to them exhibiting the condition of auditory aphantasia. Due to the recency of study into the condition and the subsequent obscurity of it, it is highly possible that many of these educators would be unaware of even the possibility of such a condition. Since it has been shown that some educators readily assume that audiation ability is innate within all individuals, it would be reasonable to expect these educators to misdiagnose situations where a student expresses confusion when faced with audiation tasks.
As demonstrated by Exeter University’s ‘Eye’s Mind’ project and the findings of Dr Adam Zeman, there is a non-trivial number of visual artists with a lack of a mind’s eye operating at a significant level in the world of visual art. Given the comparisons one can justifiably make between visual and auditory mental imagery and how they function, it would be reasonable to suggest that it is still possible for musicians to overcome their lack of a mind’s ear given the right conditions, conviction and opportunity. The case of Neesa Sunar seems to allude to this conclusion but one case in isolation is insufficient as evidence on its own. Sunar could be an outlier or an exceptional case who, through her remarkable conviction or any variation of reasons, overcame a condition that is inherently detrimental to the act of music making.
Without further study it would be impossible to ascertain whether Sunar is a unique case or just one of hundreds of non-audiating musicians who have yet to be identified in the same way that Dr Zeman claims to have identified 150 plus aphantasic visual artists.
If it is the case that these individuals exist in comparable numbers to their non-visualising counterparts then further study into auditory aphantasia and audiation within the context of music education would give music educators a better understanding of how these students function musically and help determine whether the condition and its inherent symptoms do in fact hinder a students musical ability. These studies would improve our understanding of how the musical mind works as well as potentially necessitating a revision of music education pedagogies to make them more accessible to these individuals if needed. This could include devising alternate methods of teaching and the formulation of individual learning plans for non-audiating students that cannot rely on audiation, similar perhaps to the retrospective improvisation methods employed by visually aphantasic artists.
The findings in this dissertation suggest that not enough is known about auditory aphantasia and its effects on musical ability and expression. The possibility of a subset of individuals being deterred from music education due to their inability to audiate and thus never having their musical potential realised is real and could potentially deprive these individuals and wider society of entirely unique works of musical art. For this reason among others, further study is required into both auditory aphantasia and audiation to ensure that these individuals are not excluded from music education and musicianship in general.
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