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Assessing the causal role of early visual areas in visual mental imagery

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 21, page 517 (2020)Cite this article

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We read with great interest the review by J. Pearson on visual mental imagery (Pearson, J. The human imagination: the cognitive neuroscience of visual mental imagery. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 20, 624–634 (2019))1. The author outlines a model of visual mental imagery based on neuroimaging findings that involves large-scale brain networks spanning prefrontal areas to sensory areas, and that highlights the activation of occipital areas during visual mental imagery. Specifically, the model indicates that it is the “sensory and spatial representations of the imagery content” that would be formed in early visual areas.

However, individuals with acquired brain damage restricted to the occipital cortex typically have perfectly vivid visual mental imagery. For example, a patient with bilateral strokes in the white matter between the occipital and the temporal cortices2 had severe visual deficits for object form and colour, faces, words and letters but demonstrated perfectly preserved visual mental imagery abilities for these same items3. In addition, people with cortical blindness due to bilateral occipital lesions can experience vivid visual mental images4,5.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sorbonne Université, Inserm U 1127, CNRS UMR 7225, Paris Brain Institute, ICM, Hôpital de la Pitié-Salpêtrière, 75013, Paris, France

    Paolo Bartolomeo, Dounia Hajhajate, Jianghao Liu & Alfredo Spagna

  2. Dassault Systèmes, Vélizy-Villacoublay, France

    Jianghao Liu

  3. Department of Psychology, Columbia University in the City of New York, New York, NY, USA, 10027

    Alfredo Spagna

Authors
  1. Paolo Bartolomeo
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  2. Dounia Hajhajate
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  4. Alfredo Spagna
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Correspondence to Paolo Bartolomeo.

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Bartolomeo, P., Hajhajate, D., Liu, J. et al. Assessing the causal role of early visual areas in visual mental imagery. Nat Rev Neurosci 21, 517 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-020-0348-5

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