What is the true range of mental imagery?

Schwarzkopf, Dietrich S.

doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2023.09.013

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 41 publications

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“…A recent study showed that when asked to freely imagine a scene, most participants leave out many low-level details [ 13 ]. Furthermore, some people might even experience mental images in a kind of separate space that is decoupled from the physical environment [ 14 ]. Herein lies the main difficulty of studying the role of the EVC in imagery: Given the sensitivity of activity in the EVC to changes in low-level features, the fleeting and undefined nature of mental images makes it very hard to determine any consistent relationship.…”

Section: The Challenges Of Studying the Early Visual Cortex During Me...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncovering the Role of the Early Visual Cortex in Visual Mental Imagery

Dijkstra

2024

Vision

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The question of whether the early visual cortex (EVC) is involved in visual mental imagery remains a topic of debate. In this paper, I propose that the inconsistency in findings can be explained by the unique challenges associated with investigating EVC activity during imagery. During perception, the EVC processes low-level features, which means that activity is highly sensitive to variation in visual details. If the EVC has the same role during visual mental imagery, any change in the visual details of the mental image would lead to corresponding changes in EVC activity. Within this context, the question should not be whether the EVC is ‘active’ during imagery but how its activity relates to specific imagery properties. Studies using methods that are sensitive to variation in low-level features reveal that imagery can recruit the EVC in similar ways as perception. However, not all mental images contain a high level of visual details. Therefore, I end by considering a more nuanced view, which states that imagery can recruit the EVC, but that does not mean that it always does so.

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Section: The Challenges Of Studying the Early Visual Cortex During Me...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncovering the Role of the Early Visual Cortex in Visual Mental Imagery

Dijkstra

2024

Vision

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Image retrieval based on closed-loop visual–semantic neural decoding

Fukuma,

Yanagisawa,

Sugano

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Neural decoding via the latent space of deep neural network models can infer perceived and imagined images from neural activities, even when the image is novel for the subject and decoder. Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) using the latent space enable a subject to retrieve intended image from a large dataset on the basis of their neural activities but have not yet been realized. Here, we used neural decoding in a closed-loop condition to retrieve images of the instructed categories from 2.3 million images on the basis of the latent vector inferred from electrocorticographic signals of visual cortices. Using a latent space of contrastive language-image pretraining (CLIP) model, two subjects retrieved images with significant accuracy exceeding 80% for two instructions. In contrast, the image retrieval failed using the latent space of another model, AlexNet. In another task to imagine an image while viewing a different image, the imagery made the inferred latent vector significantly closer to the vector of the imagined category in the CLIP latent space but significantly further away in the AlexNet latent space, although the same electrocorticographic signals from nine subjects were decoded. Humans can retrieve the intended information via a closed-loop BCI with an appropriate latent space.

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Toward a theory of perspective perception in pictures

Hertzmann

2024

Journal of Vision

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What is the true range of mental imagery?

Cited by 5 publications

References 41 publications

Uncovering the Role of the Early Visual Cortex in Visual Mental Imagery

Uncovering the Role of the Early Visual Cortex in Visual Mental Imagery

Image retrieval based on closed-loop visual–semantic neural decoding

Toward a theory of perspective perception in pictures

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