BackgroundThe presence of visual imagery in dreams of congenitally blind people has long been a matter of substantial controversy. We set to systematically review body of published work on the presence and nature of oneiric visuo-spatial impressions in congenitally and early blind subjects across different areas of research, from experimental psychology, functional neuroimaging, sensory substitution, and sleep research.MethodsRelevant studies were identified using the following databases: EMBASE, MEDLINE and PsychINFO.ResultsStudies using diverse imaging techniques and sensory substitution devices broadly suggest that the “blind” occipital cortex may be able to integrate non-visual sensory inputs, and thus possibly also generate visuo-spatial impressions. Visual impressions have also been reported by blind subjects who had near-death or out-of-body experiences.ConclusionDeciphering the mechanistic nature of these visual impression could open new possibility in utilization of neuroplasticity and its potential role for treatment of neurodisability.
The incubation period is regarded as an important stage in creative problem solving. The incubation effect manifests itself in the enhanced problem-solving performance after taking a break. Forgetting fixation hypothesis states that incubation provides a problem solver with an opportunity to eliminate inappropriate ideas (mental sets) and therefore to come up with a correct solution. We explored in two studies whether forgetting is an actual mechanism of the incubation period (i.e. whether the traces of inappropriate fixations in memory become weaker as a consequence of incubation). In Study 1 we employed the Alternative Uses Task (AUT) and fixed part of the participants on several most common ways of using an object. We checked then whether incubation helped to forget our fixations. We found the incubation effect (i.e. a greater fluency at the second attempt) only when participants were previously fixated. However, we also found that the incubation didn’t influence the number of fixations. Thus, we failed to find the evidence for forgetting fixation during the incubation period. In Study 2 we used anagrams with two possible solutions and fixed the participant on one of them. Then we used the Lexical Decision Task (LDT) to examine whether these fixations would become weaker as a result of the incubation period. No differences were found between the incubation and no-incubation groups in their response latencies for fixation words. Our results indicate that while the assumption that the function of an incubation period is in overcoming inappropriate mental sets seems to be true, the forgetting fixation theory provides an inaccurate account of underlying mechanisms.
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