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The Eye’s Mind – visual imagination, neuroscience and the humanities
... Art education is an important discipline within humanities education, and from a neuroaesthetics perspective, art appreciation is an important element of imagination (Lafer-Sousa & Conway, 2009;MacKisack et al., 2016;Onians, 2018;Zeman, MacKisack, & Onians, 2018). Lafer-Sousa and Conway (2009) once developed an undergraduate course titled "Vision and Art" that aimed to use studentsʼ prior interest in visual art to motivate an interest in the physiological and computational neural processes underlying vision. ...
... This suggests that individuals with no visual experience may use abstract representations of visual events and actions to interact effectively with others (Ricciardi et al., 2009). Moreover, brain plasticity mechanisms enable individuals with limited or nonexistent vision to compensate for visual deficits by reorganizing their brain circuitry to benefit from enhanced acuity in other sensory modalities such as audition and touch (Goldreich & Kanics, 2003) Proulx, Ptito, & Amedi, 2014;Roder & Wallace, 2010;Sigalov, Maidenbaum, & Amedi, 2016;Tal, Geva, & Amedi, 2017;Wolf et al., 2011;Zeman, MacKisack, & Onians, 2018). ...
Neuroscience, especially visual neuroscience, is a burgeoning field that has greatly shaped the format and efficacy of education. Moreover, findings from visual neuroscience are an ongoing source of great progress in pedagogy. In this mini‐review, I review existing evidence and areas of active research to describe the fundamental questions and general applications for visual neuroscience as it applies to education. First, I categorize the research questions and future directions for the role of visual neuroscience in education. Second, I juxtapose opposing views on the roles of neuroscience in education and reveal the “neuromyths” propagated under the guise of educational neuroscience. Third, I summarize the policies and practices applied in different countries and for different age ranges. Fourth, I address and discuss the merits of visual neuroscience in art education and of visual perception theories (e.g., those concerned with perceptual organization with respect to space and time) in reading education. I consider how vision‐deprived students could benefit from current knowledge of brain plasticity and visual rehabilitation methods involving compensation from other sensory systems. I also consider the potential educational value of instructional methods based on statistical learning in the visual domain. Finally, I outline the accepted translational framework for applying findings from educational neuroscience to pedagogical theory.
... Another potential objection may come from the studies that showed people suffering from aphantasia, despite their inability to voluntarily generate visual mental imagery during waking states, were reported to have vivid visual dreams (Zeman et al., 2018;Whiteley, 2021). This seems to imply that dreaming experiences cannot be self-generated mental imagery. ...
Enactivism interprets conscious experiences as interaction between the subject’s body and the physical environment (i.e., the body-environment interaction). During dreaming states, however, the body-environment interaction is largely limited. In this case, the phenomenal similarity between dreaming and waking experiences poses a significant challenge to enactivism. This paper proposes an enactivist account of dreaming experiences as a response to this challenge. In particular, this enactivist account explains the phenomenal similarity between dreaming and waking perceptual experiences as an illusion resulting from the disrupted subjective perspective embedded in dreaming experiences due to the limited body-environment interaction. The phenomenal consequence of this disrupted subjective perspective makes dreaming subjects experience the self-generated mental imagery during dreaming states as more realistic and perceptual than the self-generated mental imagery during waking states. In this case, the dreaming experiences are distinguished from waking perceptual experiences in terms of the phenomenal content and distinguished from waking experiences of mental imagery in terms of the phenomenal conceptualization process. The enactivist account of dreaming experiences I propose in this paper manages to explain the illusory phenomenal similarity between dreaming and waking perceptual experiences with the level of body-environment interaction, which makes it more advantageous than previous attempts to make enactivism congruous with dreaming experiences.
... Visual imagery, is referred to in the literature as visual mental imagery, visual imagination, or the mind's eye. Visual imagery is the capacity to evoke the appearance of things such as the sunset or beach ball, in their absencemeaning the object is not in the line of the visual field [3,4], or rather not seeable. This internally generated appearance should include some of the sensory visual characteristics of the object, such as shape, colour, and size, and is considered to be a conscious visual experience [5]. ...
... 4 For images, research into their narrative character remains embryonic. But the narration through and with images has been the subject of substantial research in other disciplines, such as cinema studies (Anderson and Anderson, 2009), art history (Kemp, 1994(Kemp, , 2011Kafalenos, 1996;Schaeffer, 2001;Ranta, 2013;Harris, 2016), and image theory and neuroscience (Zeman, MacKisack and Onians, 2018). ...
While much has been written about verbal narratives, we still lack a clear account of what makes images narrative. I argue that there are narrative characteristics of images and show this with examples of single images. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, I propose that from a semantic perspective, the following two characteristics are necessary for an image to be narrative: a representation of an event and a representation of time. Second, I argue that there are paradigmatic characteristics, such as at least two events, bridging connections, and unifying subjects between these events, characters with intentions, and the representation of goal-directed actions. Third, I show that it is possible to differentiate between narrative and non-narrative images while also accounting for the idea that narrativity is a matter of degree. While I do not provide a full definition of narrative images, my account constitutes a necessary first step in this direction.
... 2 Aphantasia: a cognitive performance profile Aphantasia is commonly described as a spectrum condition involving a deficit in mental imagery (see contributions in Zeman et al., 2018 andZeman, 2020, for a review of the scientific literature). The paper which introduced the term is entitled "Lives without imagery -congenital aphantasia" (Zeman et al., 2015). ...
Aphantasia, a recently labelled spectrum condition affecting mental imagery, has brought to the fore the centrality of imagination in our lives. Intuitively it may seem that we cannot have a normal life without the possession of imaginative abilities. Yet, aphantasics do not seem to be much affected by their condition. Can aphantasia tell us anything about the nature and role of our imaginative abilities? I contend that an important distinction that can shed light on this question has been largely overlooked, namely that between two senses of mental imagery: as a type of mental content (viz., mental imagery strictly speaking), and as a kind of psychological attitude (viz., sensory imagination). Drawing on this distinction, I suggest three possible conditions: (i) impairment in mental imagery only, (ii) impairment in sensory imagination only, (iii) impairment in both mental imagery and sensory imagination. I show that core cases of aphantasia are better understood as impairments in sensory imagination only, but I indicate empirical strategies to investigate whether some cases of aphantasia rather involve impairments in mental imagery, which would point toward a plurality of forms of aphantasia. Sensory imagination, however, does not exhaust the imaginative realm, therefore we shouldn’t jump to the hasty conclusion that aphantasics have no imagination. Most aphantasics lack sensory imagination, but arguably can exploit other forms of imagination. This would explain in which sense they still possess imaginative abilities.
... There is a spectrum of abilities in VIV (trait vividness; D' Angiulli et al., 2013), ranging from the profoundly aphantasic, with no visual imagery whatsoever (Keogh & Pearson, 2018;Zeman et al., 2016), to hyperphantasic individuals (Di Bernardi Luft et al., 2019;Zeman et al., 2018), including visual imagery savants such as Stephen Wiltshire (Hermelin et al., 1999;Pring et al., 1997) and Temple Grandin (Grandin, 2009). Indeed, it has been suggested that those cognitive scientists (such as Watson, Pylyshyn, and Galton's scientific colleagues) who remained fiercely skeptical about the existence of depictive mental images may in fact have been influenced by their own subjective experience of reduced VIV (Keogh & Pearson, 2018;Reisberg et al., 2003). ...
Visual imagery vividness (VIV) quantifies how clearly people can “conjure up” mental images. A higher VIV reflects a stronger image, which might be considered an important source of inspiration in creative production. However, despite numerous anecdotes documenting such a connection, a clear empirical relationship has remained elusive. We argue that (a) a misunderstanding of visual imagery as unidimensional and (b) an overreliance on Marks’ Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) are responsible. Based on both the proximal/distal imagination framework and the distinction between the ventral/dorsal visual pathways, we propose a new Multifactorial Model of Visual Imagery (MMVI). This argues that visual imagery is multidimensional and that only certain dimensions are related to creativity: inventive combinatorial ability, storyboarding, and conceptual expansion (all distal), together with the quasi-eidetic recall of detailed images (proximal). Turning to the VVIQ, a factor analysis of 280 responses in Study 1 yielded a three-factor solution (all proximal): episodic/autobiographical imagery, schematic recall, and controlled animation. None of these factors overlap with the creative dimensions of the MMVI. In Study 2, 133 participants had to remember nonverbalizable details of unfamiliar pictures for later recall; performance on this quasi-eidetic task again did not correlate with any VVIQ factors. We have thus demonstrated that the VVIQ is not unidimensional and that none of its factors appear suitable for probing imagery-creativity connections. The MMVI model is currently theoretical, and future research should confirm its validity, permitting a new, better targeted measure of VIV to be established that fully reflects its multidimensionality.
... En caso contrario, se encuentra la incapacidad para formar una imagen y de recordarla, la persona no puede visualizar imágenes. A esto último se le denomina afantasía (Galton, 1880 en Zeman et al., 2018;Zeman, Dewar, & Della-Sala, 2015;Lamer, 2016;Keogh & Pearson (2018), sugieren que la afantasia es una condición que implica una falta de evocación de imágenes sensoriales y fenoménicas y no una falta de metacognición. ...
This much-needed book introduces readers to the related fields of expertise, creativity, and performance, exploring our understanding of the factors contributing to greatness in creative domains.
Bringing together research from the fields of creativity and expertise, it provides fresh insights for newcomers and seasoned scholars alike with its approachable guide to the multidimensional complexities of expertise development. It transcends traditionally studied fields such as chess, sports, and music, instead exploring the intersection of expertise with creativity and the performing arts. Dedicated applied chapters cover eight fields, including mind-games, music, dance, creative writing, acting, art, and STEM. The book also examines the facilitators of creative performance, including aesthetic sensitivity, creativity, and mental imagery as well as the obstacles to performance such as burnout, procrastination, and gender-related challenges. The book concludes by engaging with pressing issues facing expertise, including the impact of AI. Student-friendly pedagogy is featured throughout, including 'Spotlight on...', 'Check it out...', and 'Consider this...' boxes to position material within context and engage students' learning.
Whether revealing how an actor brings their part to life, how writers conjure up their storylines and vibrant characters, or what lies behind scientific invention, The Psychology of Creative Performance and Expertise offers a fascinating insight into the multifaceted journey towards achieving creative excellence. This is a valuable resource for final-year undergraduates, postgraduate students, and scholars across a range of disciplines, including expertise or skill acquisition, the psychology of performance, and creativity.
In his proposal for a new methodological approach to the history of art, neuroarthistory, art historian John Onians based his argument in philosophy and art theory ranging from Aristotle to Leonardo, and from Reynolds to Zeki, and neuroaesthetics. However, he omitted from his overview the late Renaissance and Baroque traditions in which one can easily find writings on human cognitive ability (on intellect, senses, and imagination) and its bearings on art. In this preliminary note, we point to several 16th-century humanists, such as Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, Baldassare Castiglione, Benedetto Varchi, and artist and theorist Federico Zuccari, in whose treatments of human cognitive ability we find the application of Aristotelian tradition. Their writings further illuminate the rich and exciting insights into the nature, workings, and results of human cognition. Article received: May 21, 2022; Article accepted: July 15, 2022; Published online: October 15, 2022; Original scholarly paper
Understanding the biological basis of consciousness is one of the central challenges for modern science. Is a mature scientific explanation really possible, and if so, how should consciousness science be organized so as to achieve this? This thesis is a collection of four papers which approach these questions via an account of the natural categories or ‘kinds’, drawn from philosophy of science, to which paradigmatic mental phenomena like consciousness belong. The central claims defended in the thesis are twofold. Firstly, that to facilitate a mature science of consciousness it is crucial to explicitly introduce a new organizing concept of consciousness modelled on the kinds of concepts which underpin previous successful explanations of other natural phenomena – that of a natural kind concept of consciousness . This draws on the general observation that some concepts are better suited to scientific theorizing about the world than others, and thus that progress in scientific and philosophical domains can be (and indeed, has often been) made by working to refine our existing conceptual schemes to reflect this. Secondly, that a mature science of consciousness will be one which recognizes the reality and explanatory importance of a particular category of mental phenomena called ‘global states of consciousness’ which includes dreaming and wakefulness. Examination of this latter claim leads to a third idea explored and motivated in the thesis which brings consciousness science into closer connection with psychiatry. This is the hypothesis that Major Depressive Disorder involves a change to a subject’s global state of consciousness, marking a change from a state of ordinary wakeful consciousness to an altered ‘depressive state’ of consciousness akin to a dream or psychedelic state.
We reviewed the properties of mental imagery in aphantasia—a condition whereby individuals have difficulties in forming mental imagery, even though their visual perception is intact. Individuals with aphantasia have demonstrated lower priming effects regarding visual imagery in a binocular rivalry paradigm; however, these individuals could still complete visual short-term memory tasks normally via the use of verbal strategies (non-visual strategies). Few studies have provided clear evidence regarding its neurological basis, and future research is, thus, necessary to obtain evidence thereof. In considering object and spatial imagery, almost no differences were observed in spatial imagery between individuals with and without aphantasia in regard to rating scores of imagery questionnaires, although individuals with aphantasia show dysfunction in terms of object imagery. We review the imagery model and debate, in terms of aphantasia, which findings from studies on aphantasia may provide important suggestions for perceptual and imagery studies. We expect a better understanding of aphantasia to be promoted in society by developing studies that apply various approaches—including case studies, psychological tests, brain science, and educational support—following the present review article.
Individual variability in imagery experiences has long attracted the interest of philosophers, educators, and psychologists. Since Aristotle’s time, it was assumed that imagery is a universal ability, so everyone possesses it. Galton first measured the vividness of subjective imagery experiences, and discovered that some individuals reported zero imagination. Recent research has coined the term “aphantasia” — an inability to form mental imagery, or having a “blind mind’s eye” (Zeman, Dewar, & Della Sala, 2015). We argue that there may be more than one type of aphantasia. Substantial behavioral and neuropsychological evidence has demonstrated a distinction between visual-object imagery (mental visualization of pictorial properties such as color, shape, brightness, and texture) and visual-spatial imagery (mental visualization of spatial locations, relations, and transformations). Notably, visual imagery is not a unitary ability, so individuals who excel in object imagery do not necessarily excel in spatial imagery, and vice versa. Here we argue that the commonly described “aphantasia” is not a general imagery deficit but rather a visual-object deficit of imagery (as aphantasic people are often identified by low scores on the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire, which assesses object imagery only). We hypothesize that “spatial aphantasia” (the inability to imagine spatial properties and relationships) can be a separate type of imagery deficit. Individuals with spatial aphantasia may not necessarily have a deficit in object imagery. We discuss future research directions examining how spatial aphantasia may manifest behaviorally and neurologically, and how object and spatial aphantasia may be related
Aphantasia is a recently discovered disorder characterised by the total incapacity to generate visual forms of mental imagery. This paper proposes that aphantasia raises important theoretical concerns for the ongoing debate in the philosophy and sci- ence of consciousness over the nature of dreams. Recent studies of aphantasia and its neurobehavioral correlates reveal that the ma- jority of aphantasics, whilst unable to produce visual imagery while awake, nevertheless retain the capacity to experience rich visual dreams. This finding constitutes a novel explanandum for theories of dreaming. Specifically, I argue that the recent dream reports of aphantasics constitute an empirical challenge to the emerging family of views which claim that dreams are essentially imaginative ex- periences, constitutively involving the kinds of mental imagery which aphantasics, ex-hypothesi, lack. After presenting this challenge in the context of Jonathan Ichikawa’s recent arguments for this view, I argue that this empirical challenge may be overcome if the ima- gination theorist abandons Ichikawa’s account of dreaming in favour of a modified version. This involves the claim that dreams are essentially inactive and constitutively involve non voluntary forms of imagination. I conclude with a suggestion for further research which can test the viability of this alternative hypothesis, and move the debate forward.
Aphantasia is a spectrum disorder, affecting the ability of otherwise healthy individuals to form voluntary or conscious mental images, and in some cases also any form of sensory representation. Although only discovered in 2010, it is now estimated that 2–3% of the population may have aphantasia – otherwise termed, the absence of a ‘mind’s eye,’ that aspect of conscious experience which so many people take for granted as part of their general way of experiencing the world. Aphantasia, although it does not imply the absence of all forms of imagination, such as perspective taking and narrative construction, is quite literally a disorder affecting the individual’s capacity to form and work with images, and thus the absence of a certain way in which consciousness engages with the image-object, distinct both from perception and thought. This paper examines how phenomenological accounts of imagination can help us to better understand aphantasia, and also the ways in which aphantasia calls into question some aspects of an existential account of self.
Brain–Computer Interface (BCI) systems establish a channel for direct communication between the brain and the outside world without having to use the peripheral nervous system. While most BCI systems use evoked potentials and motor imagery, in the present work we present a technique that employs visual imagery. Our technique uses neural networks to classify the signals produced in visual imagery. To this end, we have used densely connected neural and convolutional networks, together with a genetic algorithm to find the best parameters for these networks. The results we obtained are a 60% success rate in the classification of four imagined objects (a tree, a dog, an airplane and a house) plus a state of relaxation, thus outperforming the state of the art in visual imagery classification.
Visual imagery is a form of sensory imagination, involving subjective experiences typically described as similar to perception, but which occur in the absence of corresponding external stimuli. We used the Activation Likelihood Estimation algorithm (ALE) to identify regions consistently activated by visual imagery across 40 neuroimaging studies, the first such meta-analysis. We also employed a recently developed multi-modal parcellation of the human brain to attribute stereotactic co-ordinates to one of 180 anatomical regions, the first time this approach has been combined with ALE. We identified a total 634 foci, based on measurements from 464 participants. Our overall comparison identified activation in the superior parietal lobule, particularly in the left hemisphere, consistent with the proposed ‘top-down’ role for this brain region in imagery. Inferior premotor areas and the inferior frontal sulcus were reliably activated, a finding consistent with the prominent semantic demands made by many visual imagery tasks. We observed bilateral activation in several areas associated with the integration of eye movements and visual information, including the supplementary and cingulate eye fields (SCEFs) and the frontal eye fields (FEFs), suggesting that enactive processes are important in visual imagery. V1 was typically activated during visual imagery, even when participants have their eyes closed, consistent with influential depictive theories of visual imagery. Temporal lobe activation was restricted to area PH and regions of the fusiform gyrus, adjacent to the fusiform face complex (FFC). These results provide a secure foundation for future work to characterise in greater detail the functional contributions of specific areas to visual imagery.
Since antiquity the mind has been conceived to operate via images and words. Pre-scientific thinkers (and some scientific) who presented the mind as operating in such a way tended to i) bias one representational mode over the other, and ii) claim the dominance of the mode to be the case universally. The rise of empirical psychological science in the late 19th-century rehearses the word / image division of thought but makes universal statements – e.g. that recollection is a verbal process for everyone - untenable. Since then, the investigation of individual differences and case studies of imagery loss have shown rather that words and images present alternative cognitive “strategies” that individuals will be predisposed to employing – but which, should the necessity arise, can be relearned using the other representational mode. The following sketches out this historical shift in understanding, and concludes by inviting consideration of the wider context in which discussion of the relationships between ‘images’ and ‘words’ (as both internal and external forms of representation) must take place.
Using the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire we selected 14 high-scoring and 15 low-scoring healthy participants from an initial sample of 111 undergraduates. The two groups were matched on measures of age, IQ, memory and mood but differed significantly in imagery vividness. We used fMRI to examine brain activation while participants looked at, or later imagined, famous faces and famous buildings. Group comparison revealed that the low-vividness group activated a more widespread set of brain regions while visualising than the high-vividness group. Parametric analysis of brain activation in relation to imagery vividness across the entire group of participants revealed distinct patterns of positive and negative correlation. In particular, several posterior cortical regions show a positive correlation with imagery vividness: regions of the fusiform gyrus, posterior cingulate and parahippocampal gyri (BAs 19, 29, 31 and 36) displayed exclusively positive correlations. By contrast several frontal regions including parts of anterior cingulate cortex (BA 24) and inferior frontal gyrus (BAs 44 and 47), as well as the insula (BA 13), auditory cortex (BA 41) and early visual cortices (BAs 17 and 18) displayed exclusively negative correlations. We discuss these results in relation to a previous, functional imaging study of a clinical case of 'blind imagination', and to the existing literature on the functional imaging correlates of imagery vividness and related phenomena in visual and other domains.
Vivid emotional mental imagery has been identified across a range of mental disorders. In bipolar spectrum disorders - psychopathologies characterized by mood swings that alternate between depression and mania, and include irritability and mixed affect states - mental imagery has been proposed to drive instability in both 'positive' and 'negative' mood. That is, mental imagery can act as an "emotional amplifier". The current experimental study tested this hypothesis and investigated imagery characteristics associated with mood amplification using a spectrum approach to psychopathology. Young adults (N = 42) with low, medium and high scores on a measure of subclinical features of bipolar disorder (BD), i.e., hypomanic-like experiences such as overly 'positive' mood, excitement and hyperactivity, completed a mental imagery generation training task using positive picture-word cues. Results indicate that (1) mood amplification levels were dependent on self-reported hypomanic-like experiences. In particular, (2) engaging in positive mental imagery led to mood amplification of both positive and negative mood in those participants higher in hypomanic-like experiences. Further, (3) in participants scoring high for hypomanic-like experiences, greater vividness of mental imagery during the experimental task was associated with greater amplification of positive mood. Thus, for individuals with high levels of hypomanic-like experiences, the generation of emotional mental imagery may play a causal role in their mood changes. This finding has implications for understanding mechanisms driving mood amplification in bipolar spectrum disorders, such as targeting imagery vividness in therapeutic interventions.
We investigated eye movement during past and future thinking. Participants were invited to retrieve past events and to imagine future events while their scan path was recorded by an eye-tracker. Past thinking triggered more fixation (p < .05), and saccade counts (p < .05) than future thinking. Past and future thinking triggered a similar duration of fixations and saccades, as well as a similar amplitude of saccades. Interestingly, participants rated past thinking as more vivid than future thinking (p < .01). Therefore, the vividness of past thinking seems to be accompanied by an increased number of fixations and saccades. Fixations and saccades in past thinking can be interpreted as an attempt by the visual system to find (through saccades) and activate (through fixations) stored memory representations. The same interpretation can be applied to future thinking as this ability requires activation of past experiences. However, future thinking triggers fewer fixations and saccades than past thinking: this may be due to its decreased demand on visual imagery, but could also be related to a potentially deleterious effect of eye movements on spatial imagery required for future thinking.
The past 25 years have seen a rapid growth of knowledge about brain mechanisms involved in visual mental imagery. These advances have largely been made independently of the long history of philosophical – and even psychological – reckoning with imagery and its parent concept ‘imagination’. We suggest that the view from these empirical findings can be widened by an appreciation of imagination’s intellectual history, and we seek to show how that history both created the conditions for – and presents challenges to – the scientific endeavor. We focus on the neuroscientific literature’s most commonly used task – imagining a concrete object – and, after sketching what is known of the neurobiological mechanisms involved, we examine the same basic act of imagining from the perspective of several key positions in the history of philosophy and psychology. We present positions that, firstly, contextualize and inform the neuroscientific account, and secondly, pose conceptual and methodological challenges to the scientific analysis of imagery. We conclude by reflecting on the intellectual history of visualization in the light of contemporary science, and the extent to which such science may resolve long-standing theoretical debates.
Mental imagery research has weathered both disbelief of the phenomenon and inherent methodological limitations. Here we review recent behavioral, brain imaging, and clinical research that has reshaped our understanding of mental imagery. Research supports the claim that visual mental imagery is a depictive internal representation that functions like a weak form of perception. Brain imaging work has demonstrated that neural representations of mental and perceptual images resemble one another as early as the primary visual cortex (V1). Activity patterns in V1 encode mental images and perceptual images via a common set of low-level depictive visual features. Recent translational and clinical research reveals the pivotal role that imagery plays in many mental disorders and suggests how clinicians can utilize imagery in treatment. Recent research suggests that visual mental imagery functions as if it were a weak form of perception.Evidence suggests overlap between visual imagery and visual working memory - those with strong imagery tend to utilize it for mnemonic performance.Brain imaging work suggests that representations of perceived stimuli and mental images resemble one another as early as V1.Imagery plays a pivotal role in many mental disorders and clinicians can utilize imagery to treat such disorders.
Recollection of previously experienced events is a key element of human memory that entails recovery of spatial, perceptual, and mental state details. While deficits in this capacity in association with brain disease have serious functional consequences, little is known about individual differences in autobiographical memory in healthy individuals. Recently, healthy adults with highly superior autobiographical capacities have been identified (e.g., LePort et al., 2012). Here we report data from three healthy, high functioning adults with the reverse pattern: lifelong severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM) with otherwise preserved cognitive function. Their self-reported selective inability to vividly recollect personally experienced events from a first-person perspective was corroborated by absence of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and event-related potential (ERP) biomarkers associated with naturalistic and laboratory episodic recollection, as well as by behavioural evidence of impaired episodic retrieval, particularly for visual information. Yet learning and memory was otherwise intact, as long as these tasks could be accomplished by non-episodic processes. Thus these individuals function normally in day-to-day life, even though their past is experienced in the absence of recollection.
Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Conscious experience is fluid; it rarely remains on one topic for an extended period without deviation. Its dynamic nature is illustrated by the experience of mind wandering, in which attention switches from a current task to unrelated thoughts and feelings. Studies exploring the phenomenology of mind wandering highlight the importance of its content and relation to meta-cognition in determining its functional outcomes. Examination of the information-processing demands of the mind-wandering state suggests that it involves perceptual decoupling to escape the constraints of the moment, its content arises from episodic and affective processes, and its regulation relies on executive control. Mind wandering also involves a complex balance of costs and benefits: Its association with various kinds of error underlines its cost, whereas its relationship to creativity and future planning suggest its potential value. Although essential to the stream of consciousness, various strategies may minimize the downsides of mind wandering while maintaining its productive aspects. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology Volume 66 is November 30, 2014. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/catalog/pubdates.aspx for revised estimates.
Episodic memory is widely conceived as a fundamentally constructive, rather than reproductive, process that is prone to various kinds of errors and illusions. With a view towards examining the functions served by a constructive episodic memory system, we consider recent neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies indicating that some types of memory distortions reflect the operation of adaptive processes. An important function of a constructive episodic memory is to allow individuals to simulate or imagine future episodes, happenings and scenarios. Since the future is not an exact repetition of the past, simulation of future episodes requires a system that can draw on the past in a manner that flexibly extracts and recombines elements of previous experiences. Consistent with this constructive episodic simulation hypothesis, we consider cognitive, neuropsychological and neuroimaging evidence showing that there is considerable overlap in the psychological and neural processes involved in remembering the past and imagining the future.
This article investigates whether, and how, an artificial intelligence (AI) system can be said to use visual, imagery-based representations in a way that is analogous to the use of visual mental imagery by people. In particular, this article aims to answer two fundamental questions about imagery-based AI systems. First, what might visual imagery look like in an AI system, in terms of the internal representations used by the system to store and reason about knowledge? Second, what kinds of intelligent tasks would an imagery-based AI system be able to accomplish? The first question is answered by providing a working definition of what constitutes an imagery-based knowledge representation, and the second question is answered through a literature survey of imagery-based AI systems that have been developed over the past several decades of AI research, spanning task domains of: 1) template-based visual search; 2) spatial and diagrammatic reasoning; 3) geometric analogies and matrix reasoning; 4) naive physics; and 5) commonsense reasoning for question answering. This article concludes by discussing three important open research questions in the study of visual-imagery-based AI systems—on evaluating system performance, learning imagery operators, and representing abstract concepts—and their implications for understanding human visual mental imagery.
Aphantasia, i.e., the congenital inability to experience voluntary mental imagery, offers a new model for studying the functional role of mental imagery in (visual) cognition. However, until now, there have been no studies investigating whether aphantasia can be linked to specific impairments in cognitive functioning. Here, we assess visual working memory performance in an aphantasic individual. We find that she performs significantly worse than controls on the most difficult (i.e., requiring the highest degree of precision) visual working memory trials. Surprisingly, her performance on a task designed to involve mental imagery did not differ from controls', although she lacked metacognitive insight into her performance. Together, these results indicate that although a lack of mental imagery can be compensated for under some conditions, mental imagery has a functional role in other areas of visual cognition, one of which is high-precision working memory.
For most people the use of visual imagery is pervasive in daily life, but for a small group of people the experience of visual imagery is entirely unknown. Research based on subjective phenomenology indicates that otherwise healthy people can completely lack the experience of visual imagery, a condition now referred to as aphantasia. As congenital aphantasia has thus far been based on subjective reports, it remains unclear whether individuals are really unable to imagine visually, or if they have very poor metacognition - they have images in their mind, but are blind to them. Here we measured sensory imagery in subjectively self-diagnosed aphantasics, using the binocular rivalry paradigm, as well as measuring their self-rated object and spatial imagery with multiple questionnaires (VVIQ, SUIS and OSIQ). Unlike, the general population, experimentally naive aphantasics showed almost no imagery-based rivalry priming. Aphantasic participants' self-rated visual object imagery was significantly below average, however their spatial imagery scores were above average. These data suggest that aphantasia is a condition involving a lack of sensory and phenomenal imagery, and not a lack of metacognition. The possible underlying neurological cause of aphantasia is discussed as well as future research directions.
This paper considers several types of imagination relevant to art historical enquiry. These are exemplified in artistic expressions ranging from palaeolithic paintings in the Chauvet Cave, to drawings, sculptures and buildings designed by Michelangelo and drawings and paintings by Leonardo, and are related to recent neuroscientific discoveries. From this it emerges that important types of imagination cannot be understood without an appreciation of the neural processes that underlie them and especially without an acknowledgement of the importance of neurochemistry.
The functional sensory effects and commonalties between mental imagery of different visual features such as color, form or motion remains largely unknown. Mental imagery of static visual features, including color and orientation, can have a facilitative, priming effect on subsequent perception. However, whether motion imagery can have a similar effect remains unknown. Here we used the binocular rivalry method as a measure of motion mental imagery. After imagining or viewing motion of a particular direction, participants were required to report the dominant motion direction in a brief motion rivalry stimulus. We found that motion imagery can have a facilitative priming effect on subsequent motion rivalry perception, and this effect can be attenuated by concurrent expanding and contracting perceptual motion, but not by static or flickering uniform luminance. Unlike color or orientation imagery, the effect of motion imagery on subsequent rivalry was location independent. We also observed this facilitative priming effect with prior low-contrast perceptual motion, but prior high-contrast motion induced a suppressive effect. Simultaneous imagery and perceptual motion in opposite directions induced priming, while congruent directions did not. Counter to prior findings, these results suggest motion imagery can have a priming effect on perception and that the rivalry method can be used to assess visual motion imagery. These results provide evidence for visual imagery as a multi-feature structure.
Visualization is defined as the production of mental images in the process of reading (Esrock 2005: 633). This article is concerned with varieties of visualization during an absorbing reading of a fictional narrative, the mental images that range from an indistinct and largely automatic default visualization to the much more vivid images that occur at significant stages in the narrative. Neuroscientific studies of vision have collected a large and impressively varied body of experimental evidence for two major processing streams - the dorsal and the ventral-specialized for vision-for-action and vision for-perception respectively. Further experiments distinguish different dispositional specializations: visualizers with a high spatial visualizing ability demonstrating a more efficient use of resources in the dorsal pathway, and those with a high object visualization and more efficient use of the ventral pathway (Kozhevnikov et al., 2010: 29). We can assume that both types of mental processing will be prompted in fictional narratives with differences in prominence depending on their authors' inclinations and the design and purpose of the narrative text. According to Amedeo D'Angiulli (2013: 7), who conducted elaborate tests of vividness in mental imagery using written descriptive passages as stimulus, dynamic imagery was significantly less vivid than static imagery. These results confirm traditional literary criticism based on introspection which argues that detailed description of static objects elicits an especially lively imagination. However, narratives can provoke even stronger visualizations by rendering subjective moments of seeing in which a fictional character is emotionally involved. In encouraging readers to shift now and then from the default mode of motion-oriented visualizing to a more affective and more conscious object visualization, literary fictions exercise their power to evoke imaginings that one would not generate by oneself. This may indicate that literary narratives can prove a training ground for expanding one's visualizing capacities.
In this study we show that personality traits predict the physical qualities of mentally generated colours, using the case of synaesthesia. Developmental grapheme-colour synaesthetes have the automatic lifelong association of colours paired to letters or digits. Although these colours are internal mental constructs, they can be measured along physical dimensions such as saturation and luminance. The personality of synaesthetes can also be quantified using self-report questionnaires relating, for example, to the five major traits of Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, and Openness to experience. In this paper, we bring together both types of quality by examining whether the personality of individual synaesthetes predicts their synaesthetic colours. Twenty grapheme-colour synaesthetes were tested with the Big Five Inventory (BFI) personality questionnaire. Their synaesthesia was also tested in terms of consistency and average colour saturation and luminance. Two major results were found: although personality did not influence the overall robustness (i.e., consistency) of synaesthesia, it predicted the nature of synaesthetes’ colours: the trait of Openness was positively correlated with the saturation of synaesthetic colours. Our study provides evidence that personality and internal perception are intertwined, and suggests future avenues of research for investigating the associations between the two.
Mental imagery has been proposed to contribute to a variety of high-level cognitive functions, including memory encoding and retrieval, navigation, spatial planning, and even social communication and language comprehension. However, it is debated whether mental imagery relies on the same sensory representations as perception, and if so, what functional consequences such an overlap might have on perception itself. We report novel evidence that single instances of imagery can have a pronounced facilitatory influence on subsequent conscious perception. Either seeing or imagining a specific pattern could strongly bias which of two competing stimuli reach awareness during binocular rivalry. Effects of imagery and perception were location and orientation specific, accumulated in strength over time, and survived an intervening visual task lasting several seconds prior to presentation of the rivalry display. Interestingly, effects of imagery differed from those of feature-based attention. The results demonstrate that imagery, in the absence of any incoming visual signals, leads to the formation of a short-term sensory trace that can bias future perception, suggesting a means by which high-level processes that support imagination and memory retrieval may shape low-level sensory representations.
Visual imagination and the narrative image. Parallelisms between art history and neuroscience
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