Abstract
We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess the maximal degree of shared neural processing in visual mental
imagery and visual perception. Participants either visualized or saw faint drawings of simple objects, and then judged specific aspects of the
drawings (which could only be evaluated properly if they used the correct stimulus). The results document that visual imagery and visual
perception draw on most of the same neural machinery. However, although the vast majority of activated voxels were activated during both
conditions, the spatial overlap was neither complete nor uniform; the overlap was much more pronounced in frontal and parietal regions than
in temporal and occipital regions. This finding may indicate that cognitive control processes function comparably in both imagery and
perception, whereas at least some sensory processes may be engaged differently by visual imagery and perception.
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