Mental rotation performance in aphantasia

Pounder, Zoë; Jacob, Jane; Jacobs, Christianne; Loveday, Catherine; Towell, Tony; Silvanto, Juha

doi:10.1167/18.10.1123

Cited by 13 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…Here we also provide the first objective physiological evidence of an extreme lack of visual imagery in aphantasic individuals. Aphantasia has largely been defined using subjective means ( Dawes et al, 2020 ; Jacobs et al, 2018 ; Pounder et al, 2018 ; Zeman et al, 2015 , but see Keogh and Pearson, 2018 ). Accordingly, people have remained sceptical about its true nature and possible psychogenic basis ( de Vito and Bartolomeo, 2016 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The pupillary light response as a physiological index of aphantasia, sensory and phenomenological imagery strength

Kay

Keogh

Andrillon

et al. 2022

eLife

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The pupillary light response is an important automatic physiological response which optimises light reaching the retina. Recent work has shown that the pupil also adjusts in response to illusory brightness and a range of cognitive functions, however, it remains unclear what exactly drives these endogenous changes. Here we show that the imagery pupillary light response correlates with objective measures of sensory imagery strength. Further, the trial-by-trial phenomenological vividness of visual imagery is tracked by the imagery pupillary light response. We also demonstrated that a group of individuals without visual imagery (aphantasia) do not show any significant evidence of an imagery pupillary light response, however they do show perceptual pupil light responses and pupil dilation with larger cognitive load. Our results provide evidence that the pupillary light response indexes the sensory strength of visual imagery and this work also provides the first physiological validation of aphantasia.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The pupillary light response as a physiological index of aphantasia, sensory and phenomenological imagery strength

Kay

Keogh

Andrillon

et al. 2022

eLife

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“…Future studies could directly link fine-grained cortical feedback patterns to an individual’s ability to successfully conjure up mental representations during mental rotation 45 – 47 and mental imagery 48 , 49 . Such studies may also help to reveal imbalances between feedforward and feedback signals that lead to aphantasia 50 – 52 , hallucinations or other perceptual disturbances 53 , 54 —and eventually treat these symptoms in the future.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceived and mentally rotated contents are differentially represented in cortical depth of V1

et al. 2021

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Primary visual cortex (V1) in humans is known to represent both veridically perceived external input and internally-generated contents underlying imagery and mental rotation. However, it is unknown how the brain keeps these contents separate thus avoiding a mixture of the perceived and the imagined which could lead to potentially detrimental consequences. Inspired by neuroanatomical studies showing that feedforward and feedback connections in V1 terminate in different cortical layers, we hypothesized that this anatomical compartmentalization underlies functional segregation of external and internally-generated visual contents, respectively. We used high-resolution layer-specific fMRI to test this hypothesis in a mental rotation task. We found that rotated contents were predominant at outer cortical depth bins (i.e. superficial and deep). At the same time perceived contents were represented stronger at the middle cortical bin. These results identify how through cortical depth compartmentalization V1 functionally segregates rather than confuses external from internally-generated visual contents. These results indicate that feedforward and feedback manifest in distinct subdivisions of the early visual cortex, thereby reflecting a general strategy for implementing multiple cognitive functions within a single brain region.

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“…Here we also provide the first objective physiological evidence of an extreme lack of visual imagery in aphantasic individuals. Aphantasia has largely been defined using subjective means (Dawes et al, 2020; Jacobs et al, 2018; Pounder et al, 2018; Zeman et al, 2015), but see (Keogh & Pearson, 2018). Accordingly, people have remained sceptical about its true nature and possible psychogenic basis (de Vito & Bartolomeo, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The eyes have it: The pupillary light response as a physiological index of aphantasia, sensory and phenomenological imagery strength

Kay

Keogh

Andrillion

et al. 2021

Preprint

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The pupillary light response is an important automatic physiological response that optimises light reaching the retina. Recent work has shown that the pupil also adjusts in response to illusory brightness and a range of cognitive functions, however, it remains unclear what exactly drives these endogenous changes. Here we show that the imagery pupillary light response correlates with objective measures of sensory imagery strength. Further, the trial-by-trial phenomenological vividness of visual imagery is tracked by the imagery pupillary light response. We also demonstrated that there was no evidence for an imagery pupillary light response in a group of individuals without visual imagery (aphantasia), however, they did show perceptual pupil light responses and pupil dilation with larger cognitive load. Our results provide evidence that the pupillary light response indexes the sensory strength of visual imagery and also provides the first physiological validation of aphantasia.

show abstract

Mental rotation performance in aphantasia

Cited by 13 publications

References 0 publications

The pupillary light response as a physiological index of aphantasia, sensory and phenomenological imagery strength

The pupillary light response as a physiological index of aphantasia, sensory and phenomenological imagery strength

Perceived and mentally rotated contents are differentially represented in cortical depth of V1

The eyes have it: The pupillary light response as a physiological index of aphantasia, sensory and phenomenological imagery strength

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