Why is mental imagery so closely linked to emotions, as well as affective conditions (e.g. depression) and neurodevelopmental variation (e.g. autism, alexithymia)? In our new Trends Open paper, We propose its due to their overlap in mechanisms driven by insula. 1/2

Cardiac vagal reactivity predicts visual imagery vividness. This challenges traditional efferent accounts in which autonomic activation is merely a byproduct of imagery; rather, autonomic afferent input shapes visual imagery itself www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We are recruiting for a clinical trial to treat #misophonia!👂🎧🧠 The study is in-person in #Brighton, UK. 🎡 Full participant information sheet: sussex.box.com/s/13uqmknkny.... Complete our screener questionnaire to assess eligibility: universityofsussex.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

📢We're thrilled to announce the first-ever #IRCA Conference on #Aphantasia! Call for abstracts is open, deadline: 17 April 2026 sites.google.com/view/irca-co... This 3-day interdisciplinary conference aims to consolidate current knowledge and draw a future plan for aphantasia research.

What if aphantasia isn't merely a deficit in visual imagery, but also breakdown in how the brain's predictive systems calibrate each other? New paper. 🧵 1/5

new study with Yoko Nagai and Hugo Critchley on the link between objective interoceptive sensitivity and mental imagery www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Unexplained pain and affectionate touch — two self-report questions that outperform a 42-item interoception battery in predicting mental health osf.io/preprints/ps...

Interoceptive Profiling for Predicting of Mental Health: A Person-Centred Approach Rather than asking whether interoception predict mental health across a population, we examined how measures of subjective interoception naturally cluster within individuals 1/4

The dominant view holds that aphantasics have unconscious imagery. We propose that instead they have sensory precursors: pre-perceptual codes that never get integrated into experience. New integration model unifying attention/interoception explains why: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

An Integration Model of Mental Imagery and Aphantasia: Conceptual Framework, Neuromechanistic Pathways, and Clinical Implications

Aphantasia, the strong diminution or complete absence of mental imagery, challenges long-standing views of imagery as central to cognition. Competing …

sciencedirect.com

How did imagery come about in evolution? You can't plan without knowing what you're planning for. That's why interoception is the evolutionary foundation of imagery, and why sensory and interoceptive components are bound during imagery construction. New evolutionary theory: osf.io/preprints/ps...

The Two Faces of #PTSD: Fear vs. Emotional Pain. Our new research in Biological Psychiatry @biologicalpsych.bsky.social identifies distinct clinical & neural profiles. AI says no one reads long papers, so we made an infographic!👇 Full Paper (for the insistents😉): doi.org/10.1016/j.bi...

New evidence on the role of subjective interoception in congenital aphantasia (and associated autobiographical deficits); with @mmonzel.bsky.social and Yoko Nagai www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The role of subjective interoception in autobiographical deficits in aphantasia - Scientific Reports

Scientific Reports - The role of subjective interoception in autobiographical deficits in aphantasia

nature.com

My group has cog neuro PhD positions available (at the University of Macau). We work on mind-body links, particularly with respect to imagery/aphantasia and mental health. Please get in touch if you are interested!

Our N≈500 paper on the neural architecture of mental imagery is out! Fun work with @timokvamme.bsky.social, @juhasilvanto.bsky.social, Massimo Lumaca and many others.

Timo Kvamme@timokvamme.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Just published in NeuroImage: What makes some people's mental imagery so vivid? We analyzed 500+ brains using graph theory on structural & functional connectomes... doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...

New study from @timokvamme.bsky.social suggests we may have overlooked a critical brain region in mental imagery research: the insula: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... After decades of research focusing on sensory/frontal/parietal regions, the insula may be just as central to imagery.

Neural Network Topologies Supporting Individual Variations in Vividness of Visual Imagery

Vividness of visual imagery varies considerably across individuals, yet its neural underpinnings remain unclear. As emphasized in recent debates, a ke…

sciencedirect.com

In this preprint we report that childhood trauma is linked to visual imagery deficits. Across imagery spectrum, severe childhood trauma is associated with a 20% decrease in imagery vividness vs low trauma; 4-5x higher prevalence of imagery deficits in severe vs low trauma. osf.io/preprints/ps...

Imagery/aphantasia: all roads lead to insula! New comprehensive model combining attentional and interoceptive views of aphantasia. Was a pleasure to be part of this with @christianoscholz.bsky.social @jianghaoliu.bsky.social @mmonzel.bsky.social @timokvamme.bsky.social osf.io/preprints/ps...

affective-autonomic pathway to acquired aphantasia: appr. 60% of acquired cases of aphantasia have psychogenic origin. In the interoceptive model, affective disorders disrupt the integration of bodily & cognitive signals needed for imagery. work with Yoko Nagai www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Autonomic, Neurodevelopmental, and Early Adversity Correlates of Acquired Aphantasia

Aphantasia (the inability to voluntarily generate mental imagery) has traditionally been studied as a congenital or neurological condition. However, h…

sciencedirect.com

New from Arnold @visnerd.bsky.social lab: Mental rotation is often regarded as paradigmatic for #mentalimagery. But it turns out people often don't use imagery for mental rotation - & when they do it is often not useful (same viewpoint trials). #visionscience #psychscisky doi.org/10.1016/j.co...

been a fan of @visnerd.bsky.social 's work for 20 years... his new paper is really important as it shows the limitation of Binocular Rivalry as measure of imagery vividness...important implications for aphantasia research; BR may not be objective gold standard www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Objective priming from pre-imagining inputs before binocular rivalry presentations does not predict individual differences in the subjective intensity of imagined experiences

Most people can imagine images that they experience within their mind's eye. However, there are marked individual differences, with some people report…

sciencedirect.com

Such fascinating work! I also 100% recommend this paper from the same @kerblooee.bsky.social group - the first predictive model of how we distinguish internal and external percepts...explaining imagery, halllucination... great glinical implications academic.oup.com/nc/article/2...

A novel model of divergent predictive perception

Abstract. Predictive processing theories state that our subjective experience of reality is shaped by a balance of expectations based on previous knowledge

academic.oup.com

Dr Reshanne Reeder@kerblooee.bsky.social · last yr.

If you are at #CogSci2025 go see Seana Coulson present the poster on @chkhaidze.bsky.social's computational ganzflicker study! Friday, 1st August, poster session 2! cognitivesciencesociety.org/cogsci-2025/

*Worth your time to read!* Some experts predict the impact of superhuman AI over the next decade in “AI 2027”, a scenario that represents their best guess about what that might look like very soon & it’s implications for all of us: ai-2027.com

AI 2027

A research-backed AI scenario forecast.

ai-2027.com

Really interesting work! Muraki and Pexman are taking aphantasia research into fascinating new directions!

Emiko J Muraki@emij.bsky.social · last yr.

🧠 Just out with @pennypexman.bsky.social “Simulation in the ‘Blind’ Mind”. We found that even without conscious imagery (aphantasia), people still simulate sensorimotor info when processing language. 💭🔤

➡️ Faster processing of motor-linked words in aphantasia suggest that mental simulation is intact even in the absence of conscious mental imagery. 📄 Full article in this Neuropsychologia special issue (doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...)

Our new preprint explores what people with different visual imagery abilities 'see' during Ganzflicker-induced hallucinations. We used NLP + ML techniques to analyze descriptions from 4,000+ participants. See what we found in @kerblooee.bsky.social's thread

Dr Reshanne Reeder@kerblooee.bsky.social · last yr.

Thousands of people have provided written accounts of their Ganzflicker hallucinations, so @chkhaidze.bsky.social used NLP and machine learning techniques to explore the different content described by individuals across the imagery spectrum - what did she find? ... 1/5 arxiv.org/abs/2507.09011

If you have 10-20 minutes (depends on how fast you are), would you please consider doing this online study on #mentalimagery? It contains a survey & an experiment where you look at pictures and you respond what you see: #psychscisky #neuroskyence #visionscience tstbl.co/820-917

Making Sense of Sensation: A model of Interoceptive Attribution and Appraisal with Clinical applications New preprint from @drhannahsavage.bsky.social & @sarahgarf.bsky.social #interoception #neuroskyence 🧠🫀🫁 osf.io/preprints/ps...

The most majestic thing you will see on #bluesky today. 😇

The insula is often ignored in neuroimaging studies on mental imagery. However, a new study by @timokvamme.bsky.social shows visual imagery is linked (amongst other areas) to more efficient structural connectivity in the right insula osf.io/preprints/ps...

Do you have aphantasia? We are running a new study on how individuals with or without imagery associate emotions with different parts of the body - it only takes 15 min! You can take part here: research.sc/participant/... Contact: nurdilaraozata@hotmail.com

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