title: Vividness of mental imagery: individual variability can be measured objectively.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Program in Structural and Computational Biology and Molecular Biophysics, Baylor College of Medicine, One Baylor Plaza, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
authors.forename: Xu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Cui
authors.forename: Cameron B
authors.initials: CB
authors.lastname: Jeter
authors.forename: Dongni
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: P Read
authors.initials: PR
authors.lastname: Montague
authors.forename: David M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Eagleman
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003118:Color Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination / Q000502:physiology*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011601:Psychophysics; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology