Mental imagery

Mental imagery enables us to reactivate and manipulate internal representations when the corresponding stimuli are absent. In the case of visual mental imagery, this process gives rise to the experience of ‘seeing with the mind's eye.’ Philosophy and cognitive psychology were the main disciplines interested in investigating visual mental imagery, until recently. During the last 20 years, cognitive neuroscience has been able to take advantage of the knowledge about the neural basis of primate vision to provide new insights into visual mental imagery processes. Such insights have enabled the empirical test of key questions such as the extent to which vision and visual mental imagery rely on similar representations and processes.