Farah M J
Trends Neurosci. 1989 Oct;12(10):395-9. doi: 10.1016/0166-2236(89)90079-9.
Visual mental imagery, or 'seeing with the mind's eye', has been the subject of considerable controversy in cognitive science. At issue is whether images are fundamentally different from verbal thoughts, whether they share underlying mechanisms with visual perception, and whether information in images is represented in a spatial (i.e. map-like) format. Research on the neural systems underlying imagery brings a new source of evidence to bear on these cognitive science controversies, as well as on the cerebral localization of imagery processes. Emerging from this work is the view that mental imagery involves the efferent activation of visual areas in prestriate occipital cortex, parietal and temporal cortex, and that these areas represent the same kinds of specialized visual information in imagery as they do in perception. In addition, different components of imagery processing appear to be differentially lateralized, with the generation of mental images from memory depending primarily upon structures in the posterior left hemisphere, and the rotation of mental images depending primarily upon structures in the posterior right hemisphere.
视觉心理意象，即“用心灵之眼去看”，一直是认知科学中颇具争议的主题。争论的焦点在于意象是否与言语思维根本不同，它们是否与视觉感知共享潜在机制，以及意象中的信息是否以空间（即类似地图的）形式呈现。对意象背后神经系统的研究为这些认知科学争议以及意象过程的脑定位带来了新的证据来源。从这项工作中浮现出的观点是，心理意象涉及枕叶前纹状区、顶叶和颞叶皮质中视觉区域的传出激活，并且这些区域在意象中所代表的专门视觉信息类型与它们在感知中所代表的相同。此外，意象处理的不同成分似乎存在不同程度的偏侧化，从记忆中生成心理意象主要依赖于左半球后部的结构，而心理意象的旋转主要依赖于右半球后部的结构。
