Most aphantasics find this normal, and struggle to imagine how it could be otherwise. They tend to assume that the concept of a ‘mind’s eye’ is simply metaphorical, because although they couldn’t see a cow or a kitchen if you asked them to imagine one, they were still thinking about those things. Aphantasics are more likely to have difficulty recognising faces and often have weak autobiographical memories of events in their lives. Roughly 2–3 per cent of the population is aphantasic, which makes it a surprisingly common condition.