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Until a few weeks ago, Don Parrish thought the phrase “picture this” was just a figure of speech. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the same thing—the back of his eyelids—and he assumed everyone else did, too.

Parrish, 26, lacks the ability to conjure mental images due to aphantasia, a condition believed to affect about 2 percent of the human population. Unaware of how others perceived the world, Parrish didn’t realize he was missing anything until Halloween night, when a friend closed his eyes and described the room around them in detail.

“I was just like, ‘Whoa, you can actually see that?’” said Parrish, a local singer/songwriter with a music degree from Chico State. He said his only reference points for mental imagery until then were Stephen Hawking and Nikola Tesla—geniuses with reputedly hyperactive visual imaginations. “I thought it was like some savant, miracle type of thing until I realized most people can actually see things in their mind.”

That revelation, Parrish said, has been earth-shattering: “It’s changed my whole world view. Knowing that you’ve been experiencing the world differently than everyone else your whole life really makes you question everything.”

Parrish’s condition, like most cases of aphantasia, is undiagnosed. There is limited awareness or understanding of the condition among neuroscientists and psychologists, as the term aphantasia was coined just last year. Many of those affected, known by some as “aphants,” don’t realize that their perception differs from other peoples’.

British website Aphant.Asia serves as the most comprehensive repository of information about the condition. Social media has also proven a boon to burgeoning awareness and research.

The absence of mental imagery was first discovered by English scientist Francis Galton in 1880, but was mostly ignored until this century. In 2005, Adam Zeman, a neurologist based at the University of Exeter in England, was visited by a 65-year-old man who said that his “mind’s eye” had gone dark following surgery to unblock his coronary arteries. Zeman began studying the man’s condition, and writer Carl Zimmer penned a corresponding article for Discover Magazine in 2010. The writer was inundated with messages from readers who also have the condition. Zimmer shared the messages with Zeman, which helped the neurologist realize the phenomenon was larger than just one case.

Zeman dubbed the condition “aphantasia”—the opposite of “phantasia,” a classic Greek term for mental imagery—in a report in the journal Cortex. To assist their research, Zeman’s team devised a questionnaire to identify aphants, which is available on Aphant.Asia. Parrish, like other nonvisualizers, answered “no imagery at all” to all of the questions.

A Facebook group for nonvisualizers predated the naming of the condition. One of the founders is Robb Williams, a 58-year-old man from Cornwall, England, who became aware he was a nonvisualizer more than a decade ago during a discussion with his wife about how psychics allegedly “see things.”

“It was at that point that I realized I was the odd one out,” Williams wrote in a Facebook message to the CN&R. “I’ve said many times that it was like waking up amongst aliens.”

In an October email from Zeman shared on the group’s Facebook page, the neurologist said he’s been contacted by more than 10,000 aphants to date and hopes to organize a conference next year. Zeman also said he’s embarking on a pilot study of the brain imaging profile of aphantasia versus people with average imagery and those with hyperphantasia, an extraordinary ability to visualize.

He also weighed in on conversations about whether aphantasia qualifies as a disability or disorder: “I think of it as an intriguing variation in human experience, rather than as a disorder, and this seems to be roughly how most of the ‘aphants’ who have contacted me feel about it, too,” Zeman wrote.

Since his revelation, Parrish has had many conversations trying to make sense of it, but has only found one other aphant—his brother, Sean. Sean also was unaware that his perception was atypical until his brother alerted him, and the two believe their shared “mental blindness” is part of the reason neither knew earlier.

Parrish said he’s taken to explaining the condition by saying he has “no imagination,” but admits that that’s incorrect. He can imagine things, but can’t picture them. And he dreams, though all he remembers are colors and emotions. He’s a prolific songwriter who fronts local band Bad Mana and performs solo under the monicker Bran Crown. He’s also an avid reader and believes his affinity for literature and lyrics is a byproduct of his condition.

“I think reading is the closest I get to actually visualizing,” he said. “I’ve always had a visceral connection to literature, and I think it fires up other mental processes to compensate for the lack of imagery. I get very involved in books, to the point I’ve cried at the end of most every book I’ve read.

“When I write a song, the lyrics have to bring me close to that place I get from reading,” he said.

Parrish also believes aphantasia affects his emotional process. He experiences anxiety, regret, nostalgia—the whole range of human emotions—but said he’s always been able to acknowledge those feelings and move on faster than most. He believes this is because his condition spares him the mental imagery of past trauma or imagined future disasters.

Overall, Parrish said realizing he has aphantasia has “blown his mind,” but he’s not sure how it might affect him in the long run.

“I kind of feel like I’m missing out on something, but at the same time, how can you really miss something if you’ve never known it?”