Stephan-Otto Christian, Siddi Sara, Senior Carl, Muñoz-Samons Daniel, Ochoa Susana, Sánchez-Laforga Ana María, Brébion Gildas
Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu, Universitat de Barcelona, Sant Boi de Llobregat, Spain.
Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Salud Mental (CIBERSAM), Madrid, Spain.
PLoS One. 2017 Jan 3;12(1):e0169551. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0169551. eCollection 2017.
Visual mental imagery might be critical in the ability to discriminate imagined from perceived pictures. Our aim was to investigate the neural bases of this specific type of reality-monitoring process in individuals with high visual imagery abilities.
A reality-monitoring task was administered to twenty-six healthy participants using functional magnetic resonance imaging. During the encoding phase, 45 words designating common items, and 45 pictures of other common items, were presented in random order. During the recall phase, participants were required to remember whether a picture of the item had been presented, or only a word. Two subgroups of participants with a propensity for high vs. low visual imagery were contrasted.
Activation of the amygdala, left inferior occipital gyrus, insula, and precuneus were observed when high visual imagers encoded words later remembered as pictures. At the recall phase, these same participants activated the middle frontal gyrus and inferior and superior parietal lobes when erroneously remembering pictures.
The formation of visual mental images might activate visual brain areas as well as structures involved in emotional processing. High visual imagers demonstrate increased activation of a fronto-parietal source-monitoring network that enables distinction between imagined and perceived pictures.
视觉心理意象对于区分想象的图片和感知到的图片的能力可能至关重要。我们的目的是研究具有高视觉意象能力的个体中这种特定类型的现实监测过程的神经基础。
使用功能磁共振成像对26名健康参与者进行现实监测任务。在编码阶段，以随机顺序呈现45个指定常见物品的单词和45张其他常见物品的图片。在回忆阶段，要求参与者记住呈现的是物品的图片还是仅一个单词。对比了具有高视觉意象倾向与低视觉意象倾向的两个参与者亚组。
当高视觉意象者对后来被记住为图片的单词进行编码时，观察到杏仁核、左侧枕下回、脑岛和楔前叶的激活。在回忆阶段，这些相同的参与者在错误地记住图片时激活了额中回以及顶叶的上下叶。
视觉心理意象的形成可能会激活视觉脑区以及参与情绪处理的结构。高视觉意象者表现出额顶源监测网络的激活增加，该网络能够区分想象的图片和感知到的图片。
