Cargando…

Mistaking imagination for reality: Congruent mental imagery leads to more liberal perceptual detection

Visual experiences can be triggered externally, by signals coming from the outside world during perception; or internally, by signals from memory during mental imagery. Imagery and perception activate similar neural codes in sensory areas, suggesting that they might sometimes be confused. In the cur...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Dijkstra, Nadine, Mazor, Matan, Kok, Peter, Fleming, Stephen
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8164160/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33878636
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104719
_version_ 1783701057216446464
author Dijkstra, Nadine
Mazor, Matan
Kok, Peter
Fleming, Stephen
author_facet Dijkstra, Nadine
Mazor, Matan
Kok, Peter
Fleming, Stephen
author_sort Dijkstra, Nadine
collection PubMed
description Visual experiences can be triggered externally, by signals coming from the outside world during perception; or internally, by signals from memory during mental imagery. Imagery and perception activate similar neural codes in sensory areas, suggesting that they might sometimes be confused. In the current study, we investigated whether imagery influences perception by instructing participants to imagine gratings while externally detecting these same gratings at threshold. In a series of three experiments, we showed that imagery led to a more liberal criterion for reporting stimulus presence, and that this effect was both independent of expectation and stimulus-specific. Furthermore, participants with more vivid imagery were generally more likely to report the presence of external stimuli, independent of condition. The results can be explained as either a low-level sensory or a high-level decision-making effect. We discuss that the most likely explanation is that during imagery, internally generated sensory signals are sometimes confused for perception and suggest how the underlying mechanisms can be further characterized in future research. Our findings show that imagery and perception interact and emphasize that internally and externally generated signals are combined in complex ways to determine conscious perception.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-8164160
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2021
publisher Elsevier
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-81641602021-07-01 Mistaking imagination for reality: Congruent mental imagery leads to more liberal perceptual detection Dijkstra, Nadine Mazor, Matan Kok, Peter Fleming, Stephen Cognition Article Visual experiences can be triggered externally, by signals coming from the outside world during perception; or internally, by signals from memory during mental imagery. Imagery and perception activate similar neural codes in sensory areas, suggesting that they might sometimes be confused. In the current study, we investigated whether imagery influences perception by instructing participants to imagine gratings while externally detecting these same gratings at threshold. In a series of three experiments, we showed that imagery led to a more liberal criterion for reporting stimulus presence, and that this effect was both independent of expectation and stimulus-specific. Furthermore, participants with more vivid imagery were generally more likely to report the presence of external stimuli, independent of condition. The results can be explained as either a low-level sensory or a high-level decision-making effect. We discuss that the most likely explanation is that during imagery, internally generated sensory signals are sometimes confused for perception and suggest how the underlying mechanisms can be further characterized in future research. Our findings show that imagery and perception interact and emphasize that internally and externally generated signals are combined in complex ways to determine conscious perception. Elsevier 2021-07 /pmc/articles/PMC8164160/ /pubmed/33878636 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104719 Text en © 2021 The Authors https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Dijkstra, Nadine
Mazor, Matan
Kok, Peter
Fleming, Stephen
Mistaking imagination for reality: Congruent mental imagery leads to more liberal perceptual detection
title Mistaking imagination for reality: Congruent mental imagery leads to more liberal perceptual detection
title_full Mistaking imagination for reality: Congruent mental imagery leads to more liberal perceptual detection
title_fullStr Mistaking imagination for reality: Congruent mental imagery leads to more liberal perceptual detection
title_full_unstemmed Mistaking imagination for reality: Congruent mental imagery leads to more liberal perceptual detection
title_short Mistaking imagination for reality: Congruent mental imagery leads to more liberal perceptual detection
title_sort mistaking imagination for reality: congruent mental imagery leads to more liberal perceptual detection
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8164160/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33878636
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104719
work_keys_str_mv AT dijkstranadine mistakingimaginationforrealitycongruentmentalimageryleadstomoreliberalperceptualdetection
AT mazormatan mistakingimaginationforrealitycongruentmentalimageryleadstomoreliberalperceptualdetection
AT kokpeter mistakingimaginationforrealitycongruentmentalimageryleadstomoreliberalperceptualdetection
AT flemingstephen mistakingimaginationforrealitycongruentmentalimageryleadstomoreliberalperceptualdetection