Vividness of mental imagery: individual variability can be measured objectively
Cui, Jeter, Yang, Montague, Eagleman (2007) Vividness of mental imagery: individual variability can be measured objectively Vision Res (IF: 1.4) 47(4) 474-8Abstract
When asked to imagine a visual scene, such as an ant crawling on a checkered table cloth toward a jar of jelly, individuals subjectively report different vividness in their mental visualization. We show that reported vividness can be correlated with two objective measures: the early visual cortex activity relative to the whole brain activity measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and the performance on a novel psychophysical task. These results show that individual differences in the vividness of mental imagery are quantifiable even in the absence of subjective report.
Links
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1839967http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17239915
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2006.11.013