Auditory imagery is a cognitive process for generating sound in our mind. Despite the absence of external stimuli, neuroimaging studies have found overlapping neural activities within perception and imagery. While neuroimaging studies have revealed activities unique to auditory imagery, namely memory retrieval and mental manipulation, little is known about the functional oscillatory networks associated with these processes. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to distinguish between neural oscillations for memory retrieval and mental manipulation processes by building a novel experimental paradigm containing multiple imagery conditions with the goal of enabling the effective investigation of different oscillatory processes. We found that frontal and temporal gamma power was associated with mental manipulation, while frontotemporal delta phase coupling and delta-gamma phase-amplitude coupling were each associated with memory retrieval during auditory imagery. Moreover, we found that oscillations reflecting auditory-motor communication were associated with memory retrieval. Our results suggest the critical role of neural oscillations associated with imagery-specific processes and present evidence supporting the long-debated role of motor functions in auditory imagery. Our work thus adds dimension to the state of knowledge regarding functional networks within auditory imagery.
Context Retrieval as a Critical Component in Selective Memory Retrieval
