The functional impact of mental imagery on conscious perception
Open accessAbstract
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.
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The idea that mental imagery plays a functional role in facilitating future perception is supported by a recent study that found that mental imagery biases subsequent perception in a binocular rivalry task, as well as by the correlation between mental imagery performance and representational precision.
“The idea that mental imagery plays a functional role in facilitating future perception is supported by a recent study that found that mental imagery biases subsequent perception in a binocular rivalry task [35,38], as well as by the correlation between IM performance and representational precision (Figure S2).”
From Shared representations for working memory and mental imagery in early visual cortex (2013) · cites this paper as [38]
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Soleimani, M., Intezari, A. H., Arrowsmith, J., Pauleen, D. J., & Taşkın, N. (2025) · The International Journal of Human Resource Management · doi:10.1080/09585192.2025.2480617 · Cited by 86 · see citing works
Enhanced mental imagery and intact perceptual organization in schizotypal personality disorder
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Is phenomenal force sufficient for immediate perceptual justification?
Teng, L. (2016) · Synthese · doi:10.1007/s11229-016-1233-7 · Cited by 56 · see citing works
The functional effects of color perception and color imagery
Chang, S., Lewis, D. E., & Pearson, J. (2013) · Journal of Vision · doi:10.1167/13.10.4 · Cited by 56 · see citing works
Binocular rivalry and perceptual ambiguity
Alais, D., & Blake, R. (2015) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199686858.013.034 · Cited by 33 · see citing works
Insights into embodied cognition and mental imagery from aphantasia
Muraki, E. J., Speed, L. J., & Pexman, P. M. (2023) · Nature Reviews Psychology · doi:10.1038/s44159-023-00221-9 · Cited by 56 · see citing works
An emerging paradigm: a strength-based approach to exploring mental imagery
Macintyre, T. E., Moran, A. P., Collet, C., & Guillot, A. (2013) · Frontiers in Human Neuroscience · doi:10.3389/fnhum.2013.00104 · Cited by 53 · see citing works
Imagined speech influences perceived loudness of sound
Tian, X., Ding, N., Teng, X., Bai, F., & Poeppel, D. (2018) · Nature Human Behaviour · doi:10.1038/s41562-018-0305-8 · Cited by 53 · see citing works
Palermo, L., Boccia, M., Piccardi, L., & Nori, R. (2022) · Consciousness and Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.concog.2022.103360 · Cited by 51 · see citing works
Hippocampal-occipital connectivity reflects autobiographical memory deficits in aphantasia
Monzel, M., Leelaarporn, P., Lutz, T., Schultz, J., Brunheim, S., Reuter, M., & McCormick, C. (2024) · eLife · doi:10.7554/elife.94916 · Cited by 68 · see citing works
Lewis, D. E., O'Reilly, M. J. A., Khuu, S. K., & Pearson, J. (2013) · Clinical Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/2167702613484716 · Cited by 50 · see citing works
Is it really empathy? The potentially confounding role of mental imagery in self-reports of empathy
Monzel, M., Keidel, K., & Reuter, M. (2023) · Journal of Research in Personality · doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2023.104354 · Cited by 50 · see citing works
Cao, R., Pastukhov, A., Mattia, M., & Braun, J. (2016) · Journal of Neuroscience · doi:10.1523/jneurosci.4626-15.2016 · Cited by 45 · see citing works
Between-subject variability in the influence of mental imagery on conscious perception
Dijkstra, N., Hinne, M., Bosch, S., & van Gerven, M. A. J. (2019) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/s41598-019-52072-1 · Cited by 48 · see citing works
Kay, L., Keogh, R., & Pearson, J. (2024) · Consciousness and Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.concog.2024.103694 · Cited by 49 · see citing works
Aphantasia: The science of visual imagery extremes
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Fazekas, P., Nemeth, G., & Overgaard, M. (2019) · Sleep Medicine Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.smrv.2018.10.005 · Cited by 47 · see citing works
The dimensions of episodic simulation
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Multisensory subtypes of aphantasia: Mental imagery as supramodal perception in reverse
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Imageless imagery in aphantasia revealed by early visual cortex decoding
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Keogh, R., & Pearson, J. (2020) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rstb.2019.0688 · Cited by 45 · see citing works
Aphantasia and involuntary imagery
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Two sources of bias explain errors in facial age estimation
Clifford, C. W. G., Watson, T., & White, D. (2018) · Royal Society Open Science · doi:10.1098/rsos.180841 · Cited by 43 · see citing works
Aphantasia and Conscious Thought
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Performed or observed keyboard actions affect pianists’ judgements of relative pitch
Repp, B. H., & Knoblich, G. (2009) · Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology · doi:10.1080/17470210902745009 · Cited by 40 · see citing works
Cortical depth profiles in primary visual cortex for illusory and imaginary experiences
Bergmann, J., Petro, L. S., Abbatecola, C., Li, M. S., Morgan, A., & Muckli, L. F. (2024) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-024-45065-w · Cited by 39 · see citing works
What does the term ‘complexity’ mean in the world of wine?
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Visual interference disrupts visual knowledge
Edmiston, P., & Lupyan, G. (2016) · Journal of Memory and Language · doi:10.1016/j.jml.2016.07.002 · Cited by 36 · see citing works
Gurtner, L. M., Hartmann, M., & Mast, F. W. (2021) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104597 · Cited by 36 · see citing works
A Link between Visual Disambiguation and Visual Memory
Hegdé, J., & Kersten, D. (2010) · Journal of Neuroscience · doi:10.1523/jneurosci.4415-09.2010 · Cited by 36 · see citing works
Keogh, R., & Pearson, J. (2024) · Neuroscience Research · doi:10.1016/j.neures.2024.01.008 · Cited by 37 · see citing works
Pace, T., Koenig‐Robert, R., & Pearson, J. (2023) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/09567976231198435 · Cited by 34 · see citing works
- Authors
- Pearson, J., Clifford, C. W. G., & Tong, F.
- Affiliations
- The University of Sydney (AU)
- Vanderbilt University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Pearson, Joel
- Venue
- Current Biology
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2008-07
- Volume
- 18
- Issue
- 13
- Pages
- 982-986
- ISSN
- 0960-9822 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC2519957
- OpenAlex
- W2170666077
- Cited by
- 409
- References
- 47
- Citations by year
- 2026: 22 · 2025: 27 · 2024: 46 · 2023: 84 · 2022: 18 · 2021: 30 · 2020: 24 · 2019: 19 · 2018: 22 · 2017: 16 · 2016: 16 · 2015: 14 · 2014: 15 · 2013: 17 · 2012: 12
- FWCI
- 4.65
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
- www.elsevier.com/legal/tdmrep-license (tdm)
- www.elsevier.com/open-access/userlicense/1.0/ (vor, 1842 d)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-017 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-037 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-012 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-029 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-004 (stm-asf)
- Locations
- Current Biology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Health and Medical Research Council (457146)
- National Institutes of Health (NEI R01 EY017082, R01 EY14202)
- Australian Research Council
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Multisensory perception and integration
- Keywords
- mental imagery, conscious perception, binocular rivalry, visual awareness, sensory representation, feature-based attention, memory retrieval, perceptual bias
- MeSH terms
- Attention, Humans, Imagination, Orientation, Time Factors, Visual Perception
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
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