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When is early visual cortex activated during visual mental imagery?
Abstract
Although many neuroimaging studies of visual mental imagery have revealed activation in early visual cortex (Areas 17 or 18), many others have not. The authors review this literature and compare how well 3 models explain the disparate results. Each study was coded 1 or 0, indicating whether activation in early visual cortex was observed, and sets of variables associated with each model were fit to the observed results using logistic regression analysis. Three variables predicted all of the systematic differences in the probability of activation across studies. Two of these variables were identified with a perceptual anticipation theory, and the other was identified with a methodological factors theory. Thus, the variability in the literature is not random.
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“In addition, task demands and content can modulate the neural mechanisms that mediate the mental imagery (Kosslyn and Thompson, 2003; Kraemer et al., 2005), and attentional factors also influence the depth of imagery and perceptual processing in a hierarchical neural architecture (Moscovitch et al., 1994; Roland and Gulyas, 1994; Sakai and Miyashita, 1994; Mellet et al., 1998).”
From Mental imagery of speech and movement implicates the dynamics of internal forward models (2010) · cites this paper as Kosslyn and Thompson, 2003
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Metadata
- Authors
- Kosslyn, S. M., & Thompson, W. L.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- Venue
- Psychological Bulletin
- Published
- 2003
- Volume
- 129
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 723-746
- ISSN
- 0033-2909 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-1455
- OpenAlex
- W1985236820
- Cited by
- 515
- References
- 121
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 18 · 2024: 23 · 2023: 26 · 2022: 12 · 2021: 18 · 2020: 24 · 2019: 21 · 2018: 19 · 2017: 20 · 2016: 21 · 2015: 24 · 2014: 21 · 2013: 26 · 2012: 19
- FWCI
- 7.35
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Psychological Bulletin (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH060734, 1R01 MH60734-01)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory Processes and Influences
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
- Keywords
- visual imagery, early visual cortex, methodological factors
- MeSH terms
- Humans, Imagination, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Psychological Theory, Tomography, Emission-Computed, Visual Cortex, Visual Perception, Tomography, Emission-Computed, Single-Photon
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