Vividness of mental imagery: individual variability can be measured objectively.

Full Abstract

When asked to imagine a visual scene, such as an ant crawling on a checkered table cloth toward a jar of jelly, individuals subjectively report different vividness in their mental visualization. We show that reported vividness can be correlated with two objective measures:
the early visual cortex activity relative to the whole brain activity measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and the performance on a novel psychophysical task. These results show that individual differences in the vividness of mental imagery are quantifiable even in the absence of subjective report.

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Author information

Author/s: Cui, Xu (X); Jeter, Cameron B (CB); Yang, Dongni (D); Montague, P Read (PR); Eagleman, David M (DM);

Affiliation: Program in Structural and Computational Biology and Molecular Biophysics, Baylor College of Medicine, One Baylor Plaza, Houston, TX 77030, USA.

Grants: 5 T32 NS07467 (Agency:NINDS NIH HHS) ; R01 DA011723-04A1 (Agency:NIDA NIH HHS) ; R01 NS045790-01A2 (Agency:NINDS NIH HHS) ; T32 NS007467-01 (Agency:NINDS NIH HHS)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Vision research (Vision Res), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2007-Feb; vol 47 (issue 4) : pp 474-8

Dates: Created 2007/02/05; Completed 2007/05/07; Revised 2008/11/20;

PMID: 17239915, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Adult
Color Perception - physiology
Female
Humans
Imagination - physiology

Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods
Male
Photic Stimulation - methods
Psychophysics
Visual Cortex - physiology

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