Projected imagery and field mapping
Prophantasia
Prophantasia maps projected mental imagery: reports in which internally generated visual content is experienced as world-placed, environment-overlaid, or spatially present rather than only in the mind's eye. The project keeps academic imagery research, public self-testing platforms, and community practice vocabularies in separate lanes so the field can be read without cure rhetoric.
Direction
Field map
The stable center is imagery variation: aphantasia, hyperphantasia, multisensory imagery, prevalence sensitivity, object-spatial differences, and converging measures such as binocular-rivalry priming, pupillary response, drawing tasks, and neuroimaging.
The unsettled edge is projected imagery. Prophantasia and imposition appear in community vocabularies for images or presences experienced as externally placed. That makes them useful research targets, but not settled clinical categories or validated training outcomes.
The working map splits claims along several axes: vividness, sensory modality, controllability, location, voluntariness, practice history, individual strategy, and source type. A lab result, a self-report scale, a public test, and a forum guide all enter the map differently.
Current work
- Imagery variation, aphantasia, hyperphantasia, and multimodal imagery profiles
- Measurement limits across VVIQ, binocular rivalry, pupillometry, drawing, and behavioral tasks
- Projected imagery, prophantasia, and tulpamancy imposition as boundary cases
- Induced vision through ganzfeld, ganzflicker, and stroboscopic visual phenomena
- Public platforms, self-tests, and community practice archives treated as source ecology
Connected projects
- Phenomenological Control for imagery, absorption, expectancy, and induced experience
- Brain Candy for rhythmic stimulation and non-pharmacological state-shift design
- Scientific Surrealism for disciplined practice language around making perception strange
- Optical Movement Illusions for psychophysics and perceptual-mechanism discipline
Boundary
Claim discipline
The page treats prophantasia as a research problem and practice vocabulary, not as a proven intervention. Community guides can document methods, terms, and self-experimentation cultures. They cannot establish efficacy, safety, or generalizable change.
Tulpamancy is a partial comparator, not a synonym. Its visualization and imposition wing overlaps with projected imagery, while other tulpamancy practice can be dialogic, social, identity-based, nonvisual, or centered on presence rather than image strength.
Aphantasia is also kept out of simple deficit language. The field includes individual differences, adaptive strategies, neurodiversity arguments, measurement disagreement, and people who do not want change framed as repair.
Public focus
- Field definitions before training claims
- Multidimensional imagery profiles rather than one vividness score
- Community sources marked as practice ecology, not validation evidence
- Projected imagery separated from hallucination, tulpamancy, and general vividness
References
Current references
These are the main anchors for the public field map. Academic sources define the evidence base; platform and community sources document real-world terminology, testing, and practice ecology.
Field definitions and measurement
- Galton, Francis. "Statistics of Mental Imagery." Mind (1880).
- Zeman et al. "Loss of Imagery Phenomenology with Intact Visuo-Spatial Task Performance: A Case of Blind Imagination." Neuropsychologia (2010).
- Zeman, Dewar, and Della Sala. "Lives without Imagery: Congenital Aphantasia." Cortex (2015).
- Zeman et al. "Phantasia: The Psychological Significance of Lifelong Visual Imagery Vividness Extremes." Cortex (2020).
- Blomkvist and Marks. "Defining and Diagnosing Aphantasia: Condition or Individual Difference?" Cortex (2023).
- Zeman. "Aphantasia and Hyperphantasia: Exploring Imagery Vividness Extremes." Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2024).
- Jin, Hsu, and Li. "A Systematic Review of Aphantasia: Concept, Measurement, Neural Basis, and Theory Development." Vision (2024).
- Marks. "Construct Validity of the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire." Perceptual and Motor Skills (1989).
- Keogh and Pearson. "The Blind Mind: No Sensory Visual Imagery in Aphantasia." Cortex (2018).
- Kay et al. "The Pupillary Light Response as a Physiological Index of Aphantasia, Sensory and Phenomenological Imagery Strength." eLife (2022).
- Vanbuckhave et al. "Pupil Changes to Voluntary and Involuntary Visual Imagery: A Unified Paradigm with Implications for Aphantasia Research." Neuropsychologia (2026).
- Azanon et al. "Individual Variability in Mental Imagery Vividness Does Not Predict Perceptual Interference with Imagery." PubMed record (2025).
Profiles, mechanisms, and induced vision
- Dawes et al. "A Cognitive Profile of Multi-Sensory Imagery, Memory and Dreaming in Aphantasia." Scientific Reports (2020).
- Bainbridge et al. "Quantifying Aphantasia through Drawing: Those without Visual Imagery Show Deficits in Object but Not Spatial Memory." Cortex (2021).
- Hinwar and Lambert. "Anauralia: The Silent Mind and Its Association with Aphantasia." Frontiers in Psychology (2021).
- Takahashi et al. "Diversity of Aphantasia Revealed by Multiple Assessments of Visual Imagery, Multisensory Imagery, and Cognitive Style." Frontiers in Psychology (2023).
- Wright et al. "An International Estimate of the Prevalence of Differing Visual Imagery Abilities." Frontiers in Psychology (2024).
- Keogh, Bergmann, and Pearson. "Cortical Excitability Controls the Strength of Mental Imagery." eLife (2020).
- Monzel et al. "Hippocampal-Occipital Connectivity Reflects Autobiographical Memory Deficits in Aphantasia." eLife (2024).
- Konigsmark, Bergmann, and Reeder. "The Ganzflicker Experience: High Probability of Seeing Vivid and Complex Pseudo-Hallucinations with Imagery but Not Aphantasia." Cortex (2021).
- Wackermann, Putz, and Allefeld. "Ganzfeld-Induced Hallucinatory Experience, its Phenomenology and Cerebral Electrophysiology." Cortex (2008).
- Hewitt et al. "Stroboscopically Induced Visual Hallucinations: Historical, Phenomenological, and Neurobiological Perspectives." Neuroscience of Consciousness (2025).
- Rhodes et al. "Imagery Training for Athletes with Low Imagery Abilities." Journal of Applied Sport Psychology (2024).
Platforms, imposition, and practice ecology
- Aphantasia Network. "Research Recruitment." Public platform page.
- Aphantasie.org. "Tests." Public self-testing and citizen-science page.
- University of Sussex Multisense Lab. "Aphantasia Hub." Public research hub.
- Figueroa, Alec. "Visual Imagery Resources." Community and practitioner resource.
- Tulpanomicon. "Imposition." Community guide index.
- Tulpanomicon. "Malfael's Guide to Visual Imposition." Community guide.
- Tulpa.info. "JD's Guide to Visualization." Community guide (2013).
- Veissiere. "Varieties of Tulpa Experiences." Somatosphere (2015).
- Mikles and Laycock. "Tracking the Tulpa." Nova Religio (2015).
- Laursen. "Plurality through Imagination." In Believing in Bits (2019).
- Luhrmann et al. "Learning to Discern the Voices of Gods, Spirits, Tulpas, and the Dead." Schizophrenia Bulletin (2023).
- Hale. "The Inner Vehicle: Prayer, Tulpamancy, and the Magic of the Mind." AAR attached-paper page (2024).