Imagery of a moving object: the role of occipital cortex and human MT/V5+

Kaas, Amanda; Weigelt, Sarah; Roebroeck, Alard; Kohler, Axel; Muckli, Lars (2010). Imagery of a moving object: the role of occipital cortex and human MT/V5+. NeuroImage, 49(1), pp. 794-804. San Diego, Calif.: Elsevier 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.07.055

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Visual imagery – similar to visual perception – activates feature-specific and category-specific visual areas. This is frequently observed in experiments where the instruction is to imagine stimuli that have been shown immediately before the imagery task. Hence, feature-specific activation could be related to the short-term memory retrieval of previously presented sensory information.

Here, we investigated mental imagery of stimuli that subjects had not seen before, eliminating the effects of short-term memory. We recorded brain activation using fMRI while subjects performed a behaviourally controlled guided imagery task in predefined retinotopic coordinates to optimize sensitivity in early visual areas.

Whole brain analyses revealed activation in a parieto-frontal network and lateral–occipital cortex. Region of interest (ROI) based analyses showed activation in left hMT/V5+. Granger causality mapping taking left hMT/V5+ as source revealed an imagery-specific directed influence from the left inferior parietal lobule (IPL). Interestingly, we observed a negative BOLD response in V1–3 during imagery, modulated by the retinotopic location of the imagined motion trace.

Our results indicate that rule-based motion imagery can activate higher-order visual areas involved in motion perception, with a role for top-down directed influences originating in IPL. Lower-order visual areas (V1, V2 and V3) were down-regulated during this type of imagery, possibly reflecting inhibition to avoid visual input from interfering with the imagery construction. This suggests that the activation in early visual areas observed in previous studies might be related to short- or long-term memory retrieval of specific sensory experiences.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

04 Faculty of Medicine > University Psychiatric Services > University Hospital of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy > Psychiatric Neurophysiology [discontinued]

UniBE Contributor:

Kohler, Axel

ISSN:

1053-8119

Publisher:

Elsevier

Language:

English

Submitter:

Factscience Import

Date Deposited:

04 Oct 2013 14:13

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 14:02

Publisher DOI:

10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.07.055

PubMed ID:

19646536

Web of Science ID:

000272031700078

Uncontrolled Keywords:

Human; fMRI; Connectivity; Parietal; Attention; Spatial transformations

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.3005

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/3005 (FactScience: 206116)

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