Assessing Vividness of Mental Imagery: The Plymouth Sensory Imagery Questionnaire

Publisher allows archiving of submitted msMental imagery may occur in any sensory modality, although visual imagery has been most studied. A sensitive measure of the vividness of imagery across a range of modalities is needed: the shorter version of Bett’s QMI (Sheehan, 1967) uses outdated items and has an unreliable factor structure. We report the development and initial validation of the Plymouth Sensory Imagery Questionnaire (Psi-Q) comprising items for each of the following modalities: Vision, Sound, Smell, Taste, Touch, Bodily Sensation and Emotional Feeling. An Exploratory Factor Analysis on a 35-item form indicated that these modalities formed separate factors, rather than a single imagery factor, and this was replicated by confirmatory factor analysis. The Psi-Q was validated against the Spontaneous Use of Imagery Scale (Reisberg, Pearson & Kosslyn, 2003) and Marks’ (1995) Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire-2. A short 21-item form comprising the best three items from the seven factors correlated with the total score and subscales of the full form, and with the VVIQ-2. Inspection of the data shows that while visual and sound imagery is most often rated as vivid, individuals who rate one modality as strong and the other as weak are not uncommon. Findings are interpreted within a working memory framework and point to the need for further research to identify the specific cognitive processes underlying the vividness of imagery across sensory modalities

Correlating Resting-State Functional Connectivity with Mental Imagery Vividness in a Healthy Population

Mental imagery is the act of using the “mind’s eyes and ears” to generate and experience sensory information that is absent in the external environment. The vividness of mental imagery varies across individuals, but not much is known about what contributes to these differences. This exploratory study investigates the possible relationship between resting-state functional connectivity and the vividness of mental imagery. We performed a seed-based connectivity analysis on resting-state scans of two groups of healthy control subjects with Brodmann area 19, the precuneus, the superior temporal gyrus, the hippocampus, and the posterior cingulate cortex as regions of interest. Although the underlying functional network connectivity was the same across groups, there was no groupwise replication of pairwise connectivities associated with either visual or auditory mental imagery vividness. The lack of replication may be due to a number of factors, but we highlight the impact of asking one group about the vividness of their imagery after each task-based trial and not the other. This may have primed the individuals in the former group to be in a self-referential state of mind during the resting-state scan, affecting the pairwise connectivity relationships to either imagery modality

Neural Correlates of Visual Motion Prediction

Predicting the trajectories of moving objects in our surroundings is important for many life scenarios, such as driving, walking, reaching, hunting and combat. We determined human subjects’ performance and task-related brain activity in a motion trajectory prediction task. The task required spatial and motion working memory as well as the ability to extrapolate motion information in time to predict future object locations. We showed that the neural circuits associated with motion prediction included frontal, parietal and insular cortex, as well as the thalamus and the visual cortex. Interestingly, deactivation of many of these regions seemed to be more closely related to task performance. The differential activity during motion prediction vs. direct observation was also correlated with task performance. The neural networks involved in our visual motion prediction task are significantly different from those that underlie visual motion memory and imagery. Our results set the stage for the examination of the effects of deficiencies in these networks, such as those caused by aging and mental disorders, on visual motion prediction and its consequences on mobility related daily activities

Mental Representations in Musical Processing and their Role in Action-Perception Loops

Music is created in the listener as it is perceived and interpreted - its meaning derived from our unique sense of it; likely driving the range of interpersonal differences found in music processing. Person-specific mental representations of music are thought to unfold on multiple levels as we listen, spanning from an entire piece of music to regularities detected across notes. As we track incoming auditory information, predictions are generated at different levels for different musical aspects, leading to specific percepts and behavioral outputs, illustrating a tight coupling of cognition, perception and action. This coupling, together with a prominent role of prediction in music processing, fits well with recently described ideas about the role of predictive processing in cognitive function, which appears to be especially suitable to account for the role of mental models in musical perception and action. Investigating the cerebral correlates of constructive music imagination offers an experimentally tractable approach to clarifying how mental models of music are represented in the brain. I suggest here that mental representations underlying imagery are multimodal, informed and modulated by the body and its in- and outputs, while perception and action are informed and modulated by predictions based on mental models

Neuronal Correlates of Perception, Imagery, and Memory for Familiar Tunes

We used fMRI to investigate the neuronal correlates of encoding and recognizing heard and imagined melodies. Ten participants were shown lyrics of familiar verbal tunes; they either heard the tune along with the lyrics, or they had to imagine it. In a subsequent surprise recognition test, they had to identify the titles of tunes that they had heard or imagined earlier. The functional data showed substantial overlap during melody perception and imagery, including secondary auditory areas. During imagery compared with perception, an extended network including pFC, SMA, intraparietal sulcus, and cerebellum showed increased activity, in line with the increased processing demands of imagery. Functional connectivity of anterior right temporal cortex with frontal areas was increased during imagery compared with perception, indicating that these areas form an imagery-related network. Activity in right superior temporal gyrus and pFC was correlated with the subjective rating of imagery vividness. Similar to the encoding phase, the recognition task recruited overlapping areas, including inferior frontal cortex associated with memory retrieval, as well as left middle temporal gyrus. The results present new evidence for the cortical network underlying goal-directed auditory imagery, with a prominent role of the right pFC both for the subjective impression of imagery vividness and for on-line mental monitoring of imagery-related activity in auditory areas

The neural correlates of visual imagery vividness - an fMRI study and literature review

This is the final version of the article. Available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.Using the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire we selected 14 high-scoring and 15 low-scoring healthy participants from an initial sample of 111 undergraduates. The two groups were matched on measures of age, IQ, memory and mood but differed significantly in imagery vividness. We used fMRI to examine brain activation while participants looked at, or later imagined, famous faces and famous buildings. Group comparison revealed that the low-vividness group activated a more widespread set of brain regions while visualising than the high-vividness group. Parametric analysis of brain activation in relation to imagery vividness across the entire group of participants revealed distinct patterns of positive and negative correlation. In particular, several posterior cortical regions show a positive correlation with imagery vividness: regions of the fusiform gyrus, posterior cingulate and parahippocampal gyri (BAs 19, 29, 31 and 36) displayed exclusively positive correlations. By contrast several frontal regions including parts of anterior cingulate cortex (BA 24) and inferior frontal gyrus (BAs 44 and 47), as well as the insula (BA 13), auditory cortex (BA 41) and early visual cortices (BAs 17 and 18) displayed exclusively negative correlations. We discuss these results in relation to a previous, functional imaging study of a clinical case of ‘blind imagination’, and to the existing literature on the functional imaging correlates of imagery vividness and related phenomena in visual and other domains.Jonathan Fulford’s salary was supported via an NIHR grant

How do cannabis users mentally travel in time? Evidence from an fMRI study of episodic future thinking

Rationale Episodic future thinking (EFT) is a cognitive function that allows individuals to imagine novel experiences that may happen in the future. Prior studies show that EFT is impaired in different groups of substance users. However, there is no evidence regarding the neurobiological mechanisms of EFT in cannabis users. Objectives We aimed to compare brain activations of regular cannabis users and non-using controls during an EFT fMRI task. Exploratory analyses were also conducted to investigate the association between EFT and cannabis use variables (e.g., duration of use, age onset, frequency of use). Methods Twenty current cannabis users and 22 drug-naïve controls underwent an fMRI scanning session while completing a task involving envisioning future-related events and retrieval of past memories as a control condition. The EFT fMRI task was adapted from the autobiographical interview and composed of 20 auditory cue sentences (10 cues for past and 10 cues for future events). Participants were asked to recall a past or generate a future event, in response to the cues, and then rate their vividness after each response. Results We found that cannabis users compared to non-user controls had lower activation within the cerebellum, medial and superior temporal gyrus, lateral occipital cortex, and occipital fusiform gyrus while envisioning future events. Cannabis users rated the vividness of past events significantly lower than non-users (P < 0.005). There were marginal group differences for rating the vividness of future events (P = 0.052). Significant correlations were also found between the medial and superior temporal gyrus activities and behavioral measures of EFT and episodic memory. Conclusions Cannabis users, compared to drug-naïve controls, have lower brain activation in EFT relevant regions. Thus, any attempts to improve aberrant EFT performance in cannabis users may benefit from EFT training

Neurophysiology of Mental Imagery and Reality Monitoring

People with vivid imaginations are less accurate at identifying whether memories originated from experience or imagination than people with less vivid imaginations. This can be modeled as a similarity between the memory traces created during vivid imagination and perception, which causes source confusion during recall. The role of visual imagery in this process has been well established, but the role of auditory imagery remains unclear. fMRI data collected from an auditory/visual imagination task was analyzed to determine the relationship between imagery ability, subjective ratings of imagery vividness, neurophysiology, and reality monitoring errors. I predicted that individuals with higher scores on measures of mental imagery would have a greater propensity for reality monitoring errors in both sensory domains. The study’s goal was to increase our understanding of the brain areas involved in reality monitoring and how individual differences in imagery ability contribute to misremembering imagined events as having occurred in reality

Mental Imagery Follows Similar Cortical Reorganization as Perception: Intra-Modal and Cross-Modal Plasticity in Congenitally Blind

Cortical plasticity in congenitally blind individuals leads to cross-modal activation of the visual cortex and may lead to superior perceptual processing in the intact sensory domains. Although mental imagery is often defined as a quasi-perceptual experience, it is unknown whether it follows similar cortical reorganization as perception in blind individuals. In this study, we show that auditory versus tactile perception evokes similar intra-modal discriminative patterns in congenitally blind compared with sighted participants. These results indicate that cortical plasticity following visual deprivation does not influence broad intra-modal organization of auditory and tactile perception as measured by our task. Furthermore, not only the blind, but also the sighted participants showed cross-modal discriminative patterns for perception modality in the visual cortex. During mental imagery, both groups showed similar decoding accuracies for imagery modality in the intra-modal primary sensory cortices. However, no cross-modal discriminative information for imagery modality was found in early visual cortex of blind participants, in contrast to the sighted participants. We did find evidence of cross-modal activation of higher visual areas in blind participants, including the representation of specific-imagined auditory features in visual area V4