Visual mental imagery: More than “seeing with the mind’s eye”

2008 ◽  
pp. 231-266
2011 ◽  
Vol 1367 ◽  
pp. 287-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clémence Bourlon ◽  
Bastien Oliviero ◽  
Nicolas Wattiez ◽  
Pierre Pouget ◽  
Paolo Bartolomeo

2000 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 50-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marlene Behrmann

Research on visual mental imagery has been fueled recently by the development of new behavioral and neuroscientific techniques. This review focuses on two major topics in light of these developments. The first concerns the extent to which visual mental imagery and visual perception share common psychological and neural mechanisms; although the research findings largely support convergence between these two processes, there are data that qualify the degree of overlap between them. The second issue involves the neural substrate mediating the process of imagery generation. The data suggest a slight left-hemisphere advantage for this process, although there is considerable variability across and within subjects. There also remain many unanswered questions in this field, including what the relationship is between imagery and working memory and what representational differences, if any, exist between imagery and perception.


2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-319
Author(s):  
Vahid Aryadoust

This study investigates the dimensions of visual mental imagery (VMI) in aural discourse comprehension. We introduce a new approach to inspect VMIs which integrates forensic arts and latent class analysis. Thirty participants listened to three descriptive oral excerpts and then verbalized what they had seen in their mind’s eye. The verbalized descriptions were simultaneously illustrated by two trained artists using the Adobe Photoshop® and the digital drawing tablets with electromagnetic induction technology, generating approximations of the VMIs. Next, a code sheet was developed to examine the illustrated VMIs on 16 dimensions. Latent class analysis identified three classes of VMI imaginers with nine discriminating dimensions: clarity, completeness of figures, details, shape crowdedness, shape-added features, texture, space, time and motion, and flamboyance. The classes were further differentiated based on the significant differences in their listening abilities. An individual lacking the ability to imagine (a condition called Aphantasia) and some evidence that VMIs in listening are both symbolic and depictive were also found.


2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 1395-1404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Seurinck ◽  
Floris P. de Lange ◽  
Erik Achten ◽  
Guy Vingerhoets

A growing number of studies show that visual mental imagery recruits the same brain areas as visual perception. Although the necessity of hV5/MT+ for motion perception has been revealed by means of TMS, its relevance for motion imagery remains unclear. We induced a direction-selective adaptation in hV5/MT+ by means of an MAE while subjects performed a mental rotation task that elicits imagined motion. We concurrently measured behavioral performance and neural activity with fMRI, enabling us to directly assess the effect of a perturbation of hV5/MT+ on other cortical areas involved in the mental rotation task. The activity in hV5/MT+ increased as more mental rotation was required, and the perturbation of hV5/MT+ affected behavioral performance as well as the neural activity in this area. Moreover, several regions in the posterior parietal cortex were also affected by this perturbation. Our results show that hV5/MT+ is required for imagined visual motion and engages in an interaction with parietal cortex during this cognitive process.


2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 270-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reed Maxwell ◽  
Steven Jay Lynn ◽  
Scott Lilienfeld

Although interest in the relationship between mental imagery and psychopathology has increased greatly over the last decade, few publications to date have examined relationships between personality-related psychopathology and mental imagery use, abilities, or both. However, we have reason to expect that substantive relationships may exist. For example, studies have consistently linked psychopathy and borderline personality disorder to problems in emotion experience and emotion regulation, and a growing number of studies indicate that deficits in visual mental imagery use and ability in particular may contribute to such problems. Using correlational data from multiple self-report measures of normal and pathological personality functioning and visual mental imagery, our study presents preliminary evidence for lower levels of self-reported visual mental imagery use, abilities, or both among noncriminal individuals with higher levels of self-reported psychopathy and individuals with greater emotional regulation difficulties, a core feature of borderline personality disorder. We also found significant relationships among self-reported visual mental imagery use, ability, or both, and personality variables shown to strongly predict psychopathy and emotional regulation difficulties. Limitations of the study, especially its reliance on a correlational, cross-sectional design, are discussed, and implications for future research are explored.


Author(s):  
Cristina Trentini ◽  
Marco Pagani ◽  
Marco Lauriola ◽  
Renata Tambelli

Neuroscientific research has largely investigated the neurobiological correlates of maternal and (to a much lesser extent) paternal responsiveness in the post-partum period. In contrast, much less is known about the neural processing of infant emotions during pregnancy. Twenty mothers and 19 fathers were recruited independently during the third trimester of pregnancy. High-density electroencephalography (hdEEG) was recorded while expectant parents passively viewed images representing distressed, ambiguous, happy, and neutral faces of unknown infants. Correlational analyses were performed to detect a link between neural responses to infant facial expressions and emotional self-awareness. In response to infant emotions, mothers and fathers showed similar cerebral activity in regions involved in high-order socio-affective processes. Mothers and fathers also showed different brain activity in premotor regions implicated in high-order motor control, in occipital regions involved in visuo-spatial information processing and visual mental imagery, as well as in inferior parietal regions involved in attention allocation. Low emotional self-awareness negatively correlated with activity in parietal regions subserving empathy in mothers, while it positively correlated with activity in temporal and occipital areas implicated in mentalizing and visual mental imagery in fathers. This study may enlarge knowledge on the neural response to infant emotions during pregnancy.


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