Hostname: page-component-89b8bd64d-5bvrz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-12T05:06:42.200Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hallucinations and mental imagery demonstrate top-down effects on visual perception

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2017

Piers D. L. Howe  and
Olivia L. Carter
Piers D. L. Howe
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne, School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia. pdhowe@unimelb.edu.au ocarter@unimelb.edu.au http://psych.unimelb.edu.au/people/piers-howe http://psych.unimelb.edu.au/people/olivia-carter
Olivia L. Carter
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne, School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia. pdhowe@unimelb.edu.au ocarter@unimelb.edu.au http://psych.unimelb.edu.au/people/piers-howe http://psych.unimelb.edu.au/people/olivia-carter
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this commentary, we present two examples where perception is not only influenced by, but also in fact driven by, top-down effects: hallucinations and mental imagery. Crucially, both examples avoid all six of the potential confounds that Firestone & Scholl (F&S) raised as arguments against previous studies claiming to demonstrate the influence of top-down effects on perception.

Information

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 39 , 2016 , e248
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Albers, A. M., Kok, P., Toni, I., Dijkerman, H. C. & de Lange, F. P. (2013) Shared representations for working memory and mental imagery in early visual cortex. Current Biology 23:1427–31.Google Scholar
Blasdel, G. G. & Salama, G. (1986) Voltage-sensitive dyes reveal a modular organization in monkey striate cortex. Nature 321:579–85.Google Scholar
Collins, J. A. & Olson, I. R. (2014) Knowledge is power: How conceptual knowledge transforms visual cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 21:843–60.Google Scholar
ffytche, D. H., Howard, R. J., Brammer, M. J., David, A., Woodruff, P. & Williams, S. (1998) The anatomy of conscious vision: An fMRI study of visual hallucinations. Nature Neuroscience 1:738–42.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ford, J. M., Palzes, V. A., Roach, B. J., Potkin, S. G., van Erp, T. G., Turner, J. A., Mueller, B. A., Calhoun, V. D., Voyvodic, J., Belger, A., Bustillo, J., Vaidya, J. G., Preda, A., McEwen, S. C. (2015) Visual hallucinations are associated with hyperconnectivity between the amygdala and visual cortex in people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin 41:223–32.Google Scholar
Kosslyn, S. M., Behrmann, M. & Jeannerod, M. (1995) The cognitive neuroscience of mental imagery. Neuropsychologia 33:1335–44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Naselaris, T., Olman, C. A., Stansbury, D. E., Ugurbil, K. & Gallant, J. L. (2015) A voxel-wise encoding model for early visual areas decodes mental images of remember scenes. NeuroImage 105:215–28.Google Scholar
Pearson, J., Rademaker, R. L. & Tong, F. (2011) Evaluating the mind's eye: The metacognition of visual imagery. Psychological Science 22:1535–42.Google Scholar
Schultz, G. & Melzack, R. (1991) The Charles Bonnet syndrome: “Phantom visual images.” Perception 20:809–25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schultz, G., Needham, W., Taylor, R., Shindell, S. & Melzack, R. (1996) Properties of complex hallucinations associated with deficits in vision. Perception 25:715–26.Google Scholar
Slotnick, S. D., Thompson, W. L., Kosslyn, S. M. (2005) Visual mental imagery induces retinotopically organized activation of early visual areas. Cerebral Cortex 15:1570–83.Google Scholar
Stokes, M., Thompson, R., Cusack, R. & Duncan, J. (2009) Top-down activation of shape-specific population codes in visual cortex during mental imagery. Journal of Neuroscience 29:1565–72.Google Scholar
Vetter, P. & Newen, A. (2014) Varieties of cognitive penetration in visual perception. Consciousness and Cognition 27:62–75.Google Scholar
Vollenweider, F. X. (2001) Brain mechanisms of hallucinogens and entactogens. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience 3:265–79.Google Scholar
Vukicevic, M. & Fitzmaurice, K. (2008) Butterflies and black lacy patterns: The prevalence and characteristics of Charles Bonnet hallucinations in an Australian population. Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology 36:659–65.Google Scholar