Smaller primary visual cortex is associated with stronger, but less precise mental imagery

Cerebral Cortex

Volumn 26, Issue 9, 2016, Pages 3838-3850

  Bergmann, Johanna ^a,b,c   Genç, Erhan ^b,c,d   Kohler, Axel ^b,c,e   Singer, Wolf ^b,c,f,g   Pearson, Joel ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES   (Australia)

^b MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR BRAIN RESEARCH   (Germany)

^c Brain Imaging Center Frankfurt   (Germany)

^d RUHR UNIVERSITY BOCHUM   (Germany)

^e UNIVERSITY OF OSNABRÜCK   (Germany)

^f FRANKFURT INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDIES   (Germany)

^g ERNST STRÜNGMANN INSTITUTE ESI FOR NEUROSCIENCE IN COOPERATION WITH MAX PLANCK SOCIETY   (Germany)

Author keywords

early visual cortex; gray matter surface size; individual differences; primary visual cortex; visual imagery

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; BRAIN MAPPING; BRAIN SIZE; CONTROLLED STUDY; FUNCTIONAL MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING; HUMAN; HUMAN EXPERIMENT; IMAGERY; IMAGINATION; MENTAL FUNCTION; MENTAL IMAGERY; NEUROANATOMY; NORMAL HUMAN; PERCEPTION; PREFRONTAL CORTEX; PRIORITY JOURNAL; SPATIAL ORIENTATION; STRIATE CORTEX; TASK PERFORMANCE; VISUAL CORTEX; ADOLESCENT; ADULT; ANATOMY AND HISTOLOGY; COGNITION; FEMALE; MALE; NERVE CELL NETWORK; PHYSIOLOGY; VISION; YOUNG ADULT;

ADOLESCENT; ADULT; COGNITION; FEMALE; HUMANS; IMAGINATION; MALE; NERVE NET; TASK PERFORMANCE AND ANALYSIS; VISUAL CORTEX; VISUAL PERCEPTION; YOUNG ADULT;

EID: 84988431090     PISSN: 10473211     EISSN: 14602199     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhv186     Document Type: Article

References (85)

1. Albers AM, Kok P, Toni I, Dijkerman HC, de Lange FP. (2013). Shared representations for working memory and mental imagery in early visual cortex. Curr Biol. 23: 1427-1431
2. Bakken TE, Roddey JC, Djurovic S, Akshoomoff N, Amaral DG, Bloss CS, Casey BJ, Chang L, Ernst TM, Gruen JR, et al. (2012). Association of common genetic variants in GPCPD1 with scaling of visual cortical surface area in humans. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 109: 3985-3990
3. Benson TL, Park S. (2013). Exceptional visuospatial imagery in schizophrenia; implications for madness and creativity. Front Hum Neurosci. 7: 756
4. Bergmann J, Genc E, Kohler A, Singer W, Pearson J. (2014). Neural anatomy of primary visual cortex limits visual working memory. Cereb Cortex
5. Brainard DH. (1996). The Psychophysics Toolbox. Spat Vis. 10: 433-436
6. Brascamp JW, Knapen THJ, Van Ee R, Van Den Berg AV. (2007). Flash suppression and flash facilitation in binocular rivalry. J Vis. 7 (12): 1-12
7. Bryant RA, Harvey AG. (1996). Visual imagery in posttraumatic stress disorder. J Trauma Stress. 9: 613-619
8. Burgess PW, Dumontheil I, Gilbert SJ. (2007). The gateway hypothesis of rostral prefrontal cortex (area 10) function. Trends Cogn Sci. 11: 290-298
9. Carter O, Cavanagh P. (2007). Onset rivalry: brief presentation isolates an early independent phase of perceptual competition. PLoS One. 2: e343
10. Cattaneo Z, Vecchi T, Pascual-Leone A, Silvanto J. (2009). Contrasting early visual cortical activation states causally involved in visual imagery and short-term memory. Eur J Neurosci. 30: 1393-1400
11. Chang S, Lewis DE, Pearson J. (2013). The functional effects of color perception and color imagery. J Vis. 13(10): 1-10
12. Chao LL, Lenoci M, Neylan TC. (2012). Effects of post-traumatic stress disorder on occipital lobe function and structure. Neuroreport. 23: 412-419
13. Chapman J. (1967). Visual imagery and motor phenomena in acute schizophrenia. Br J Psychiatry. 113: 771-778
14. Chen C-H, Gutierrez ED, Thompson W, Panizzon MS, Jernigan TL, Eyler LT, Fennema-Notestine C, Jak AJ, Neale MC, Franz CE, et al. (2012). Hierarchical genetic organization of human cortical surface area. Science (80). 335: 1634-1636
15. Chen W, Kato T, Zhu XH, Ogawa S, Tank DW, Ugurbil K. (1998). Human primary visual cortex and lateral geniculate nucleus activation during visual imagery. Neuroreport. 9: 3669-3674
16. Christoff K, Gabrieli JDE. (2000). The frontopolar cortex and human cognition: Evidence for a rostrocaudal hierarchical organization within the human prefrontal cortex. Psychobiology. 28: 168-186
17. Dale AM, Fischl B, Sereno MI. (1999). Cortical surface-based analysis I: segmentation and surface reconstruction. Neuroimage. 9: 179-194
18. De Araujo DB, Ribeiro S, Cecchi GA, Carvalho FM, Sanchez TA, Pinto JP, de Martinis BS, Crippa JA, Hallak JEC, Santos AC. (2012). Seeing with the eyes shut: neural basis of enhanced imagery following ayahuasca ingestion. Hum Brain Mapp. 33: 2550-2560
19. D Esposito M, Detre JA, Aguirre GK, Stallcup M, Alsop DC, Tippet LJ, Farah MJ. (1997). A functional MRI study of mental image generation. Neuropsychologia. 35: 725-730
20. Dentico D, Cheung BL, Chang J-Y, Guokas J, Boly M, Tononi G, Van Veen B. (2014). Reversal of cortical information flow during visual imagery as compared to visual perception. Neuroimage. 100: 237-243
21. Dorph-Petersen K-A, Pierri JN, Wu Q, Sampson AR, Lewis DA. (2007). Primary visual cortex volume and total neuron number are reduced in schizophrenia. J Comp Neurol. 501: 290-301
22. Dougherty RF, Koch VM, Brewer AA, Modersitzki J, Wandell BA. (2003). Visual field representations and locations of visual areas V1/2/3 in human visual cortex. J Vis. 3: 586-598
23. Duncan RO, Boynton GM. (2003). Cortical magnification within human primary visual cortex correlates with acuity thresholds. Neuron. 38: 659-671
24. Filimonov I. (1932). Ueber die Variabilitaet Der Grosshirnrindenstruktur. Mitt 2: regio occipitalis beim erwachsenen Menschen. J Psychol Neurol. 44: 1-96
25. Fischl B, Sereno MI, Dale AM. (1999). Cortical surface-based analysis II: Inflation, flattening and a surface-based coordinate system. Neuroimage. 9: 195-207
26. Fischl B, Sereno MI, Tootell RB, Dale AM. (1999). High-resolution intersubject averaging and a coordinate system for the cortical surface. Hum Brain Mapp. 8: 272-284
27. Fletcher PC, Henson RN. (2001). Frontal lobes and human memory: insights from functional neuroimaging. Brain. 124: 849-881
28. Foa EB, Steketee G, Turner RM, Fischer SC. (1980). Effects of imaginal exposure to feared disasters in obsessive-compulsive checkers. Behav Res Ther. 18: 449-455
29. Galton F. (1880). Statistics of mental imagery. Mind. 5: 301-318
30. Genç E, Bergmann J, Singer W, Kohler A. (2013). Surface area of early visual cortex predicts individual speed of traveling waves during binocular rivalry. Cereb Cortex. 25: 1499-1508
31. Hagler DJ, Saygin AP, Sereno MI. (2006). Smoothing and cluster thresholding for cortical surface-based group analysis of fMRI data. Neuroimage. 33: 1093-1103
32. Harvey BM, Dumoulin SO. (2011). The relationship between cortical magnification factor and population receptive field size in human visual cortex: constancies in cortical architecture. J Neurosci. 31: 13604-13612
33. Hinds O, Rajendran N, Polimeni JR, Augustinack JC, Wiggins G, Wald LL, Diana Rosas H, Potthast A, Schwartz EL, Fischl B. (2008). Accurate prediction of V1 location from cortical folds in a surface coordinate system. Neuroimage. 39: 1585-1599
34. Hirsch CR, Holmes EA. (2007). Mental imagery in anxiety disorders. Psychiatry Interpers Biol Process. 6: 161-165
35. Horikawa T, Tamaki M, Miyawaki Y, Kamitani Y. (2013). Neural decoding of visual imagery during sleep. Science (80). 340: 639-642
36. Ishai A, Ungerleider LG, Haxby JV. (2000). Distributed neural systems for the generation of visual images. Neuron. 28: 979-990
37. Kaas J. (2000). Why is brain size so important: design problems and solutions as neocortex gets bigger or smaller. Brain Mind. 1: 7-23
38. Keogh R, Pearson J. (2011). Mental imagery and visual working memory. PLoS One 6: e29221
39. Keogh R, Pearson J. (2014). The sensory strength of voluntary visual imagery predicts visual working memory capacity. J Vis. 14: 1-13
40. Kleiner M, Brainard D, Pelli D. (2007). What s new in Psychtoolbox-3? Perception. 36 ECVP Abstract Supplement
41. Kosslyn SM, Ganis G, Thompson WL. (2001). Neural foundations of imagery. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2: 635-642
42. Kosslyn SM, Pascual-Leone A, Felician O, Camposano S, Keenan JP, Thompson WL, Ganis G, Sukel KE, Alpert NM. (1999). The role of area 17 in visual imagery: convergent evidence from PET and rTMS. Science (80). 284: 167-170
43. Kosslyn SM, Thompson WL. (2003). When is early visual cortex activated during visual mental imagery? Psychol Bull. 129: 723-746
44. Landgraf S, Osterheider M. (2013). To see or not to see: that is the question. The Protection-Against-Schizophrenia (PaSZ) model: evidence from congenital blindness and visuo-cognitive aberrations. Front Psychol. 4: 352
45. Lau HC, Passingham RE. (2006). Relative blindsight in normal observers and the neural correlate of visual consciousness. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 103: 18763-18768
46. Leuba G, Kraftsik R. (1994). Changes in volume, surface estimate, three-dimensional shape and total number of neurons of the human primary visual midgestation until old age. Anat Embryol (Berl). 190: 351-366
47. Matthews NL, Collins KP, Thakkar KN, Park S. (2013). Visuospatial imagery and working memory in schizophrenia. Cogn Neuropsychiatry. 37-41
48. Mechelli A, Price CJ, Friston KJ, Ishai A. (2004). Where bottom-up meets top-down: neuronal interactions during perception and imagery. Cereb Cortex. 14: 1256-1265
49. Morina N, Leibold E, Ehring T. (2012). Vividness of general mental imagery is associated with the occurrence of intrusive memories. J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry. 44: 221-226
50. Muckli L, Kohler A, Kriegeskorte N, Singer W. (2005). Primary visual cortex activity along the apparent-motion trace reflects illusory perception. PLoS Biol. 3: e265
51. Naselaris T, Olman CA, Stansbury DE, Ugurbil K, Gallant JL. (2014). A voxel-wise encoding model for early visual areas decodes mental images of remembered scenes. Neuroimage. 105: 215-228
52. Oertel V, Rotarska-Jagiela A, van de Ven V, Haenschel C, Grube M, Stangier U, Maurer K, Linden DEJ. (2009). Mental imagery vividness as a trait marker across the schizophrenia spectrum. Psychiatry Res. 167: 1-11
53. Ostby Y, Walhovd KB, Tamnes CK, Grydeland H, Westlye LT, Fjell AM. (2012). Mental time travel and default-mode network functional connectivity in the developing brain. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 109: 16800-16804
54. Panizzon MS, Fennema-Notestine C, Eyler LT, Jernigan TL, Prom-Wormley E, Neale M, Jacobson K, Lyons MJ, Grant MD, Franz CE, et al. (2009). Distinct genetic influences on cortical surface area and cortical thickness. Cereb Cortex. 19: 2728-2735
55. Pearce E, Stringer C, Dunbar RIM. (2013). New insights into differences in brain organization between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans. Proc R Soc B. 280: 1-7
56. Pearson J. (2014). New directions in mental-imagery research: the binocular-rivalry technique and decoding fMRI patterns. Curr Dir Psychol Sci. 23: 178-183
57. Pearson J, Brascamp J. (2008). Sensory memory for ambiguous vision. Trends Cogn Sci. 12: 334-341
58. Pearson J, Clifford CWG. (2005). Mechanisms selectively engaged in rivalry: normal vision habituates, rivalrous vision primes. Vision Res. 45: 707-714
59. Pearson J, Clifford CWG, Tong F. (2008). The functional impact of mental imagery on conscious perception. Curr Biol. 18: 982-986
60. Pearson J, Kosslyn SM. (2015). The heterogeneity of mental representation: ending the imagery debate. Proc Natl Acad Sci
61. Pearson J, Rademaker RL, Tong F. (2011). Evaluating the mind s eye: the metacognition of visual imagery. Psychol Sci. 22: 1535-1542
62. Pelli DG. (1997). VideoToolbox software for visual psychophysics: transforming numbers into movies. Spat Vis. 10: 437-442
63. Rademaker RL, Pearson J. (2012). Training visual imagery: improvements of metacognition, but not imagery strength. Front Psychol. 3: 224
64. Ramnani N, Owen AM. (2004). Anterior prefrontal cortex: insights into function from anatomy and neuroimaging. Nat Rev Neurosci. 5: 184-194
65. Rcman R, Landis C. (1945). Hallucinations and mental imagery. J Nerv Ment Dis. 102: 327-331
66. Ringo JL. (1991). Neuronal interconnection as a function of brain size. Brain Behav Evol. 38: 1-6
67. Schacter DL, Addis DR, Buckner RL. (2007). Remembering the past to imagine the future: the prospective brain. Nat Rev Neurosci. 8: 657-661
68. Schlegel A, Kohler PJ, Fogelson SV, Alexander P, Konuthula D, Tse PU. (2013). Network structure and dynamics of the mental workspace. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 110: 16277-16282
69. Schwarzkopf DS, Rees G. (2013). Subjective size perception depends on central visual cortical magnification in human V1. PLoS One 8: e60550
70. Schwarzkopf DS, Song C, Rees G. (2011). The surface area of human V1 predicts the subjective experience of object size. Nat Neurosci. 14: 28-30
71. Schwiedrzik CM, Singer W, Melloni L. (2011). Subjective and objective learning effects dissociate in space and in time. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 108: 4506-4511
72. Sereno AMI, Dale AM, Reppas JB, Kwong KK, Belliveau JW, Brady TJ, Rosen R, Tootell RBH. (1995). Borders of multiple visual areas in humans revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging. Science (80). 268: 889-893
73. Shin LM, Kosslyn SM, Mcnally RJ, Alpert NM, Rauch SL, Macklin ML, Pitman RK. (1997). Imagery perception and perception in posttraumatic stress disorder. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 54: 233-241
74. Song C, Samuel D, Kanai R, Rees G, Song C, Schwarzkopf DS, Kanai R, Rees G. (2015). Neural population tuning links visual cortical anatomy to human visual perception. Neuron. 85: 641-656
75. Song C, Schwarzkopf DS, Kanai R, Rees G. (2011). Reciprocal anatomical relationship between primary sensory and prefrontal cortices in the human brain. J Neurosci. 31: 9472-9480
76. Song C, Schwarzkopf DS, Lutti A, Li B, Kanai R, Rees G. (2013). Effective connectivity within human primary visual cortex predicts interindividual diversity in illusory perception. J Neurosci. 33: 18781-18791
77. Song C, Schwarzkopf DS, Rees G. (2013). Variability in visual cortex size reflects tradeoff between local orientation sensitivity and global orientation modulation. Nat Commun. 4: 2201
78. Stanley J, Carter O, Forte J. (2011). Color and luminance influence, but can not explain, binocular rivalry onset bias. PLoS One 6: e18978
79. Stensaas SS, Eddington DK, Dobelle WH. (1974). The topography and variability of the primary visual cortex in man. J Neurosurg. 40: 747-755
80. Tanaka Y, Sagi D. (1998). Long-lasting, long-range detection facilitation. Vision Res. 38: 2591-2599
81. Verghese A, Kolbe SC, Anderson AJ, Egan GF, Vidyasagar TR. (2014). Functional size of human visual area V1: a neural correlate of top-down attention. Neuroimage. 93(Pt 1): 47-52
82. Wandell BA, Dumoulin SO, Brewer AA. (2007). Visual field maps in human cortex. Neuron. 56: 366-383
83. Wierenga LM, Langen M, Oranje B, Durston S. (2014). Unique developmental trajectories of cortical thickness and surface area. Neuroimage. 87: 120-126
84. Winkler AM, Kochunov P, Blangero J, Almasy L, Zilles K, Fox PT, Duggirala R, Glahn DC. (2010). Cortical thickness or grey matter volume? The importance of selecting the phenotype for imaging genetics studies. Neuroimage. 53: 1135-1146
85. Wolfe JM. (1984). Reversing ocular dominance and suppression in a single flash. Vision Res. 24: 471-478