In the mind's eye: The visual imagery component of attitudes

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Edwards ◽  
Patrick Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Visual Imagery ◽  
Mind's Eye

scholarly journals Phantasia - the psychological significance of lifelong visual imagery vividness extremes

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Zeman ◽  
Fraser Milton ◽  
Sergio Della Sala ◽  
Michaela Dewar ◽  
Timothy Frayling ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Face Recognition ◽  
Autobiographical Memory ◽  
Visual Imagery ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Questionnaire Data ◽  
Psychological Significance ◽  
Elevated Rate ◽  
Sense Modalities ◽  
Mind's Eye

Visual imagery typically enables us to see absent items in the mind’s eye. It plays a role in memory, day-dreaming and creativity. Since coining the terms aphantasia and hyperphantasia to describe the absence and abundance of visual imagery, we have been contacted by many thousands of people with extreme imagery abilities. Questionnaire data from 2000 participants with aphantasia and 200 with hyperphantasia indicate that aphantasia is associated with scientific and mathematical occupations, whereas hyperphantasia is associated with ‘creative’ professions. Participants with aphantasia report an elevated rate of difficulty with face recognition and autobiographical memory, whereas participants with hyperphantasia report an elevated rate of synaesthesia. Around half those with aphantasia describe an absence of wakeful imagery in all sense modalities, while a majority dream visually. Aphantasia appears to run within families more often than would be expected by chance. Aphantasia and hyperphantasia appear to be widespread but neglected features of human experience with informative psychological associations.

scholarly journals What is the Link Between Mental Imagery and Sensory Sensitivity? Insights from Aphantasia

Perception ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (9) ◽  
pp. 757-782
Author(s):  
C. J. Dance ◽  
J. Ward ◽  
J. Simner
Keyword(s):  
Visual Imagery ◽  
Lower Sensitivity ◽  
Similar Relationship ◽  
Sense Organs ◽  
Sensory Sensitivity ◽  
Multiple Domains ◽  
Sensory Imagery ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Mind's Eye

People with aphantasia have impoverished visual imagery so struggle to form mental pictures in the mind's eye. By testing people with and without aphantasia, we investigate the relationship between sensory imagery and sensory sensitivity (i.e., hyper- or hypo-reactivity to incoming signals through the sense organs). In Experiment 1 we first show that people with aphantasia report impaired imagery across multiple domains (e.g., olfactory, gustatory etc.) rather than simply vision. Importantly, we also show that imagery is related to sensory sensitivity: aphantasics reported not only lower imagery, but also lower sensory sensitivity. In Experiment 2, we showed a similar relationship between imagery and sensitivity in the general population. Finally, in Experiment 3 we found behavioural corroboration in a Pattern Glare Task, in which aphantasics experienced less visual discomfort and fewer visual distortions typically associated with sensory sensitivity. Our results suggest for the very first time that sensory imagery and sensory sensitivity are related, and that aphantasics are characterised by both lower imagery, and lower sensitivity. Our results also suggest that aphantasia (absence of visual imagery) may be more accurately defined as a subtype of a broader imagery deficit we name dysikonesia, in which weak or absent imagery occurs across multiple senses.

Visual imagery and memory: Do retrieval strategies affect what the mind's eye sees?

2004 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 631-652 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd Handy ◽  
Michael Miller ◽  
Bjoern Schott ◽  
Neha Shroff ◽  
Petr Janata ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Imagery ◽  
Retrieval Strategies ◽  
Mind's Eye

A replication of “The Ganzflicker experience” with a sample size of 1587

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reshanne R Reeder
Keyword(s):  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Visual Imagery ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Altered States ◽  
Full Field ◽  
States Of Consciousness ◽  
Data Points ◽  
Vividness Rating ◽  
Eye Imagery ◽  
Mind's Eye

“Ganzflicker” is a full-field, rhythmic visual flicker, using a technique that is known to elicit pseudo-hallucinations and altered states of consciousness (Allefeld et al., 2011; Bartossek et al., 2021; Schwartzman et al., 2019; Sumich et al., 2018). In a recently published study (Königsmark et al., 2021), we found individual differences in the likelihood of reporting visual pseudo-hallucinations, as well as different features of pseudo-hallucinations, while observing 10 minutes of continuous red-and-black flicker at 7.5 Hz, termed “Ganzflicker”. In a post-experience questionnaire of 204 responses, we found extremely strong evidence that the likelihood of experiencing complex and vivid pseudo-hallucinations is related to self-reported visual mental imagery vividness. Specifically, people with no visual imagery (or, at most, dim or vague imagery; aphantasia distribution) are much less likely to experience vivid and complex pseudo-hallucinations than people with moderate-to-vivid visual imagery (imagery distribution).In this commentary, I present an updated analysis of Ganzflicker questionnaire responses, due to a significant increase in the number of new data points collected (N = 5553), influenced by a recent article published in the popular media (Reeder, n.d.). In this new analysis, environmental variables were found to play a role in pseudo-hallucination proneness, particularly concerning whether participants viewed the Ganzflicker on a computer or mobile phone. This suggests that the level of visual immersion increases the likelihood of anomalous perceptual experiences. I also found extremely strong evidence that pseudo-hallucination proneness differs between people with a completely blind mind’s eye (imagery vividness rating = 0) compared to people with imagery, regardless of imagery vividness rating (ratings 1-10). This suggests that there are sometimes important distinctions between having low imagery and no imagery. I additionally found differences in the reported complexity and vividness of pseudo-hallucinations between people belonging to the aphantasia distribution (vividness ratings from 0-3) and imagery distribution (vividness ratings from 4-10), replicating previous results. Finally, I found that people belonging to the imagery distribution are more likely to see more frequent pseudo-hallucinations for a longer duration than people from the aphantasia distribution. In sum, I replicated the core result of the previous paper in a dataset that is orders of magnitude larger than the original.

Reading the mind's eye: Online detection of visuo-spatial working memory and visual imagery in the inferior temporal lobe

NeuroImage ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 872-879 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos M. Hamamé ◽  
Juan R. Vidal ◽  
Tomás Ossandón ◽  
Karim Jerbi ◽  
Sarang S. Dalal ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Temporal Lobe ◽  
Visual Imagery ◽  
Spatial Working Memory ◽  
Online Detection ◽  
Mind's Eye

scholarly journals “Ayahuasca turned on my mind’s eye”: Enhanced visual imagery after ayahuasca intake in a man with “blind imagination” (aphantasia)

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 74-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael G. dos Santos ◽  
Scotty Enyart ◽  
José Carlos Bouso ◽  
Òscar Pares ◽  
Jaime E. C. Hallak
Keyword(s):  
Visual Imagery ◽  
Mind's Eye

scholarly journals Contribution of right hemisphere to visual imagery: A visual working memory impairment?

2008 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 902-911 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARINA GASPARINI ◽  
ANNE MARIE HUFTY ◽  
GIOVANNI MASCIARELLI ◽  
DONATELLA OTTAVIANI ◽  
UGO ANGELONI ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Visual Imagery ◽  
Visual Memory ◽  
Right Hemisphere ◽  
Anterior Choroidal ◽  
The Right ◽  
Mind's Eye ◽  
Choroidal Artery

Visual Imagery is the ability to generate mental images in the absence of perception, that is, “seeing with the mind's eye.” We describe a patient, IM, who suffered from an acute ischemic stroke in the right anterior choroidal artery who appeared to demonstrate relatively isolated impairment in visual imagery. Her cognitive function, including her performance on tests of semantic function, was at ceiling, apart from a deficit in visual memory. IM failed in tasks involving degraded stimuli, object decision involving reality judgments on normal animals, and drawings from memory. By contrast, she was able to match objects seen from an unfamiliar viewpoint and to perform tasks of semantic and visual association. We hypothesize that IM has a visual working memory deficit that impairs her ability to generate full visual representations of objects given their names, individual feature, or partial representations. The deficit appears to be the result of damage to connections between the right thalamus and the right temporal lobe. Our findings may help to clarify the role of the thalamus in the cortical selective engagement processes that underlie working memory. (JINS, 2008, 14, 902–911.)

18 The eye’s mind: perspectives on visual imagery

2020 ◽  
Vol 91 (8) ◽  
pp. e8.1-e8
Author(s):  
Adam Zeman
Keyword(s):  
Medical School ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Visual Imagery ◽  
Interdisciplinary Collaboration ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Clinical Work ◽  
Psychological Disorder ◽  
Senior Lecturer ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Mind's Eye

Prof. Zeman trained in Medicine at Oxford University Medical School, after a first degree in Philosophy and Psychology, and later in Neurology in Oxford, at The National Hospital for Neurology in Queen Square, London and Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge. He moved to Edinburgh in 1996, as a Consultant and Senior Lecturer (later Reader) in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences and to the Peninsula Medical School (now University of Exeter Medical School) in September 2005 as Professor of Cognitive and Behavioural Neurology. His specialised clinical work is in cognitive and behavioural neurology, including neurological disorders of sleep.His main research interests are disorders of visual imagery and forms of amnesia occurring in epilepsy. He has an active background interest in the science and philosophy of consciousness, publishing a wide-ranging review of the field in Brain (2001; 124:1263–1289) and an accessible introduction to the subject for a general readership (Consciousness: a user’s guide, Yale University Press, 2002). In 2008 he published an introduction to neurology for the general reader, A Portrait of the Brain (Yale UP), and in 2012, Epilepsy and Memory (OUP) with Narinder Kapur and Marilyn Jones-Gotman. From 2007–2010 he was Chairman of the British Neuropsychiatry Association. He launched and continues to direct its training course in neuropsychiatry.For most of us visual imagery is a conspicuous ingredient of the imaginative experience which allows us to escape from the here and now into the past, the future and the worlds conceived by science and art. But there appears to be wide inter-individual variation in the vividness of visual imagery. Although the British psychologist Galton together with the Parisian neurologist Charcot and his psychiatrist colleague Cotard - recognised that some individuals may lack wakeful imagery entirely, the existence of ‘extreme imagery’ has been oddly neglected since this early work. In 2015 we coined the term ‘aphantasia’ to describe the lack of the mind’s eye, describing 21 individuals who reported a lifelong inability to visualise (Cortex, 2015;73:378–80). Since then we have heard from around 14,000 people, most reporting lifelong aphantasia, or its converse hyperphantasia, but also less common ‘acquired’ imagery loss resulting from brain injury or psychological disorder. Preliminary analyses suggests association between vividness extremes, occupational preference and reported abilities in face recognition and autobiographical memory. Many people with lifelong aphantasia nevertheless dream visually. Imagery in other modalities is variably affected. Extreme imagery appears to run in families more often than would be expected by chance. I will describe the findings of our recent pilot study of neuropsychological and brain imaging signatures of extreme imagery, and place our study of a- and hyper-phantasia in the context of the Eye’s Mind project, an interdisciplinary collaboration funded by the AHRC (http://medicine.exeter.ac.uk/research/neuroscience/theeyesmind/). In addition to our work on extreme imagery, we have reviewed the intellectual history of visual imagery (MacKisack et al, Frontiers in Psychology, 515:1–16. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00515), undertaken a recent ALE meta-analysis of functional imaging studies of visualisation (Winlove et al, Cortex, 20182018; 105:4–25) and organised an exhibition of work by artists with extreme imagery vividness (Extreme Imagination: inside the mind’s eye Exeter University Press, 2018.)

scholarly journals The Two Eyes of the Blind Mind: Object vs. Spatial Aphantasia?

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 51-62
Author(s):  
Olesya Blazhenkova ◽  
◽  
Ekaterina Pechenkova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Imagery ◽  
Individual Variability ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Visual Object ◽  
Spatial Imagery ◽  
Visual Spatial ◽  
Future Research Directions ◽  
Neuropsychological Evidence ◽  
Spatial Locations ◽  
Mind's Eye

Individual variability in imagery experiences has long attracted the interest of philosophers, educators, and psychologists. Since Aristotle’s time, it was assumed that imagery is a universal ability, so everyone possesses it. Galton first measured the vividness of subjective imagery experiences, and discovered that some individuals reported zero imagination. Recent research has coined the term “aphantasia” — an inability to form mental imagery, or having a “blind mind’s eye” (Zeman, Dewar, & Della Sala, 2015). We argue that there may be more than one type of aphantasia. Substantial behavioral and neuropsychological evidence has demonstrated a distinction between visual-object imagery (mental visualization of pictorial properties such as color, shape, brightness, and texture) and visual-spatial imagery (mental visualization of spatial locations, relations, and transformations). Notably, visual imagery is not a unitary ability, so individuals who excel in object imagery do not necessarily excel in spatial imagery, and vice versa. Here we argue that the commonly described “aphantasia” is not a general imagery deficit but rather a visual-object deficit of imagery (as aphantasic people are often identified by low scores on the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire, which assesses object imagery only). We hypothesize that “spatial aphantasia” (the inability to imagine spatial properties and relationships) can be a separate type of imagery deficit. Individuals with spatial aphantasia may not necessarily have a deficit in object imagery. We discuss future research directions examining how spatial aphantasia may manifest behaviorally and neurologically, and how object and spatial aphantasia may be related

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