Introduction
There have been various neurological studies conducted in order to find out if the neurological processes and mechanisms involved in imagery and perception are the same.
Explanation of Solution
Answer and explanation
a. Brain imaging – In 1993, Samuel Le Bihan and coworkers, through a research study that involved brain imaging, found that visual cortex activity was observed while the participants were engaged in an active imagination as well as when they were visually perceiving the thing. It was found that the striate cortex in the visual cortex showed an increase during both the visual perception and mental imagination of a stimulus.
b. Deactivation of a part of the brain – A study was conducted that involved a patient with a rare case of epilepsy, wherein the occipital lobe of the patient was removed in order to treat them. Before the removal of the occipital lobe, the patient took a mental walk test, wherein they were asked to imagine that they were walking toward an animal, and they had to measure the distance between the animal and themselves when the animal covered their visual field. After the right occipital lobe of the patient was removed, the same procedure was followed and the results showed that, before the removal of this part of the brain, the distance was estimated to be 15 feet before the image covered the field entirely and, after the surgery, the distance between the patient and the animal was 35 feet. Removing the occipital lobe affected the patient's capacity to judge the visual field.
c. Neuropsychology – Neuropsychological studies have found that damage caused to any part of the brain that is responsible for visual perception and imagery might affect the two processes depending on where the damage had occurred. For example, a case study of a patient named R.M. revealed that, due to suffering from damage to occipital and parietal lobes, his ability to process images was impaired; however his perceptual abilities were intact. Due to this, he could recognize objects, but could not mentally visualize those objects.
d. Recording from single neurons in the brain – A study was conducted by Gabriel Kreiman and colleagues wherein they placed electrodes in different regions of the medial temporal lobe (hippocampus and amygdala) of the participants. It was meant to find out if the single neuron in the brain were activated when the participants were asked to see or visualize an image. This showed that some neurons responded to some images while not to others. Similarly, those neurons responded in the same way while visualizing those images. For instance, the neural activity was similar when participants saw the picture of a baseball and when they imagined the image of a baseball. These neurons came to be known as imagery neurons.
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