Cortical activity involved in perception and imagery of visual stimuli in a subject with aphantasia. An EEG case report

ABSTRACT

Aphantasia has been described as the inability to voluntarily evoke mental images using the “mind’s eye.” We studied a congenital aphantasic subject using neuropsychological testsand 64 channel EEG recordings, in order to studycortical activity involved in perception and imagery evaluating event-related potentials(N170, P200, N250). The subject is in the normal range of the neuropsychological tests performed, except for specific imagery tests. The EEG results show that when he evokes the same mental image, he starts the evoking process from left temporal instead of frontal areas, he does not activate occipital visual nor left anterior parietal areas.

KEYWORDS:

• Aphantasia
• visual imagery
• mental imagery
• EEG
• ERP

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, M.F., upon reasonable request.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.