Misplaced Pages

#818181

100-411: The centre aims to enhance our understanding of how genes are regulated at both the single cell and whole organism level. Researchers use a wide range of advanced techniques, including live cell fluorescent imaging and mass spectrometry-based proteomics , to explore the functions of key proteins and molecular mechanisms in cell biology. Live cell imaging and proteomic studies have allowed researchers at

200-401: A carving or sculpture . Images may be displayed through other media, including a projection on a surface, activation of electronic signals, or digital displays ; they can also be reproduced through mechanical means, such as photography , printmaking , or photocopying . Images can also be animated through digital or physical processes. In the context of signal processing , an image is

300-415: A hard copy , is one that has been recorded on a material object, such as paper or textile . A mental image exists in an individual's mind as something one remembers or imagines. The subject of an image does not need to be real; it may be an abstract concept such as a graph or function or an imaginary entity. For a mental image to be understood outside of an individual's mind, however, there must be

400-476: A "cult" value as an example of artistic beauty. Following years of various reproductions of the painting, the portrait's "cult" status has little to do with its original subject or the artistry. It has become famous for being famous, while at the same time, its recognizability has made it a subject to be copied, manipulated, satirized, or otherwise altered in forms ranging from Marcel Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q . to Andy Warhol 's multiple silk-screened reproductions of

500-436: A (usually) male viewer. The documentary film scholar Bill Nichols has also studied how apparently "objective" photographs and films still encode assumptions about their subjects. Images perpetuated in public education, media, and popular culture have a profound impact on the formation of such mental images: What makes them so powerful is that they circumvent the faculties of the conscious mind but, instead, directly target

600-428: A combination of both methods. A two-dimensional image does not need to use the entire visual system to be a visual representation. An example of this is a grayscale ("black and white") image, which uses the visual system's sensitivity to brightness across all wavelengths without taking into account different colors. A black-and-white visual representation of something is still an image, even though it does not fully use

700-419: A distributed amplitude of color(s). In optics , the term "image" (or "optical image") refers specifically to the reproduction of an object formed by light waves coming from the object. A volatile image exists or is perceived only for a short period. This may be a reflection of an object by a mirror, a projection of a camera obscura , or a scene displayed on a cathode-ray tube . A fixed image , also called

800-455: A form of record-keeping; as an element of spiritual, religious, or magical practice; or even as a form of communication. Early writing systems , including hieroglyphics , ideographic writing, and even the Roman alphabet , owe their origins in some respects to pictorial representations. Images of any type may convey different meanings and sensations for individual viewers, regardless of whether

900-401: A fraction of a second. The traditional standard for the display of individual frames by a motion picture projector has been 24 frames per second (FPS) since at least the commercial introduction of "talking pictures" in the late 1920s, which necessitated a standard for synchronizing images and sounds. Even in electronic formats such as television and digital image displays, the apparent "motion"

1000-446: A kaleidoscopic field, in which no distinct object can be discerned. Mental imagery can sometimes produce the same effects as would be produced by the behavior or experience imagined. The nature of these experiences, what makes them possible, and their function (if any) have long been subjects of research and controversy in philosophy , psychology , cognitive science , and, more recently, neuroscience . As contemporary researchers use

1100-856: A meta-analysis of 27 neuroimaging studies demonstrated imagery-related activity in a region of the left ventral temporal cortex, which was dubbed the Fusiform Imagery Node. An additional Bayesian analysis excluded a role for occipital cortex in visual mental imagery, consistent with the evidence from neurological patients. Imagery has been thought to cooccur with perception; however, participants with damaged sense-modality receptors can sometimes perform imagery of said modality receptors. Neuroscience with imagery has been used to communicate with seemingly unconscious individuals through fMRI activation of different neural correlates of imagery, demanding further study into low quality consciousness. A study on one patient with one occipital lobe removed found

SECTION 10

#1732797571819

1200-430: A person's brain while visualizing different activities. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to study the association between early visual cortex activity relative to the whole brain while participants visualized themselves or another person bench pressing or stair climbing. Reported image vividness correlates significantly with the relative fMRI signal in the visual cortex. Thus, individual differences in

1300-470: A series of neuroimaging experiments that the mental image of objects like the letter "F" are mapped, maintained and rotated as an image-like whole in areas of the human visual cortex. Moreover, Kosslyn's work showed that there are considerable similarities between the neural mappings for imagined stimuli and perceived stimuli. The authors of these studies concluded that, while the neural processes they studied rely on mathematical and computational underpinnings,

1400-596: A specific form of mental imagery show less gray matter than experts of mental imagery congruent to that form. A meta-analysis of neuroimagery studies revealed significant activation of the bilateral dorsal parietal, interior insula, and left inferior frontal regions of the brain. Causal evidence from neurological patients with brain lesions demonstrates that vivid visual mental imagery is possible even when occipital visual areas are lesioned or disconnected from more anterior cortex. Visual mental imagery can instead be impaired by left temporal damage. Consistent with these findings,

1500-426: A vehicular accident. This deficit prevented him from being able to recognize objects and copy objects fluidly. Surprisingly, his ability to draw accurate objects from memory indicated his visual imagery was intact and normal. Furthermore, C.K. successfully performed other tasks requiring visual imagery for judgment of size, shape, color, and composition. These findings conflict with previous research as they suggest there

1600-425: A visual image compared to when the visual image was just maintained. These regions included the occipital lobe and ventral stream areas, two parietal lobe regions, the posterior parietal cortex and the precuneus lobule, and three frontal lobe regions, the frontal eye fields , dorsolateral prefrontal cortex , and the prefrontal cortex . Due to their suspected involvement in working memory and attention ,

1700-510: A way of conveying that mental image through the words or visual productions of the subject. The broader sense of the word 'image' also encompasses any two-dimensional figure, such as a map , graph , pie chart , painting , or banner . In this wider sense, images can also be rendered manually, such as by drawing , the art of painting, or the graphic arts (such as lithography or etching ). Additionally, images can be rendered automatically through printing , computer graphics technology, or

1800-401: Is occluded . However, this hypothesis has yet to be fully supported with neurochemical evidence and plausible mechanism for DMT production. The condition where a person lacks mental imagery is called aphantasia . The term was first suggested in a 2015 study. Common examples of mental images include daydreaming and the mental visualization that occurs while reading a book. Another is of

1900-570: Is a partial dissociation between visual imagery and visual perception. C.K. exhibited a perceptual deficit that was not associated with a corresponding deficit in visual imagery, indicating that these two processes have systems for mental representations that may not be mediated entirely by the same neural substrates. Schlegel and colleagues (2013) conducted a functional MRI analysis of regions activated during manipulation of visual imagery. They identified 11 bilateral cortical and subcortical regions that exhibited increased activation when manipulating

2000-402: Is a single static image. This phrase is used in photography, visual media , and the computer industry to emphasize that one is not talking about movies, or in very precise or pedantic technical writing such as a standard . A moving image is typically a movie ( film ) or video , including digital video . It could also be an animated display , such as a zoetrope . A still frame

2100-404: Is a still image derived from one frame of a moving one. In contrast, a film still is a photograph taken on the set of a movie or television program during production, used for promotional purposes. In image processing , a picture function is a mathematical representation of a two-dimensional image as a function of two spatial variables . The function f(x,y) describes the intensity of

SECTION 20

#1732797571819

2200-417: Is actually the result of many individual lines giving the impression of continuous movement. This phenomenon has often been described as " persistence of vision ": a physiological effect of light impressions remaining on the retina of the eye for very brief periods. Even though the term is still sometimes used in popular discussions of movies, it is not a scientifically valid explanation. Other terms emphasize

2300-458: Is alleged to have replied "I refute it thus!" as he kicked a large rock and his leg rebounded. His point was that the idea that the rock is just another mental image and has no material existence of its own is a poor explanation of the painful sense data he had just experienced. David Deutsch addresses Johnson's objection to idealism in The Fabric of Reality when he states that, if we judge

2400-516: Is equivalent to mental images—our mental images are not a copy of another material reality but that reality itself. Berkeley, however, sharply distinguished between the images that he considered to constitute the external world, and the images of individual imagination. According to Berkeley, only the latter are considered "mental imagery" in the contemporary sense of the term. The eighteenth century British writer Dr. Samuel Johnson criticized idealism. When asked what he thought about idealism, he

2500-415: Is found in the deeper portions of the brain below the neocortex . In a large study with 285 participants, Tabi, Maio, Attaallah, et al. (2022) investigated the association between an established measure of visual mental imagery, Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) scores, and volumes of brain structures including the hippocampus , amygdala , primary motor cortex , primary visual cortex and

2600-450: Is found to occur in the dorsolateral prefrontal area, inferior frontal gyrus, frontal gyrus, insula, precentral gyrus, and the medial frontal gyrus with basal ganglia activation in the ventral posteriomedial nucleus and putamen (hemisphere activation corresponds to the location of the imagined tactile stimulus). Research in gustatory imagery reveals activation in the anterior insular cortex, frontal operculum, and prefrontal cortex. Novices of

2700-430: Is hoped that a better knowledge will be gained of human diseases such as cancer which are often characterised by chromosome instability. 56°27′29″N 2°59′09″W  /  56.458003°N 2.985901°W  / 56.458003; -2.985901 Image An image is a visual representation. An image can be two-dimensional , such as a drawing , painting , or photograph , or three-dimensional , such as

2800-533: Is initiated by prefrontal cortex and posterior parietal cortex activity. Generation of objects from memory resulted in initial activation of the prefrontal and the posterior parietal areas, which then activate earlier visual areas through backward connectivity. Activation of the prefrontal cortex and posterior parietal cortex has also been found to be involved in retrieval of object representations from long-term memory , their maintenance in working memory, and attention during visual imagery. Thus, Ishai et al. suggest that

2900-450: Is not fully understood. Studies using fMRI have shown that the lateral geniculate nucleus and the V1 area of the visual cortex are activated during mental imagery tasks. Ratey writes: The visual pathway is not a one-way street. Higher areas of the brain can also send visual input back to neurons in lower areas of the visual cortex. [...] As humans, we have the ability to see with

3000-451: Is not just "interference" that inhibits visual mental imagery but is capable of facilitating mental imagery. As cognitive neuroscience approaches to mental imagery continued, research expanded beyond questions of serial versus parallel or topographic processing to questions of the relationship between mental images and perceptual representations. Both brain imaging (fMRI and ERP) and studies of neuropsychological patients have been used to test

3100-808: Is the Plymouth Sensory Imagery Questionnaire which measures seven senses. This form of imagery assessment correlates with the VVIQ for visual imagery and shows how other senses vary dependent on individual differences. Some educational theorists have drawn from the idea of mental imagery in their studies of learning styles . Proponents of these theories state that people often have learning processes that emphasize visual, auditory, and kinesthetic systems of experience. According to these theorists, teaching in multiple overlapping sensory systems benefits learning, and they encourage teachers to use content and media that integrates well with

Centre for Gene Regulation and Expression - Misplaced Pages Continue

3200-421: Is the same as a second figure, some of which rotations of the first "object". Shepard and Metzler proposed that if we decomposed and then mentally re-imaged the objects into basic mathematical propositions, as the then-dominant view of cognition "as a serial digital computer" assumed, then it would be expected that the time it took to determine whether the object is the same or not would be independent of how much

3300-403: Is tightly wound and compacted so that it can fit into the nuclei of eukaryotic cells, as well as the protein-DNA complexes that are involved in this packaging. The controlled unravelling of DNA is an important step in the regulation of gene function. Angus Lamond, a Wellcome Principal Research Fellow, studies the composition and function of organelles and multiprotein complexes found within

3400-565: Is used across world religions, particularly as an aid for prayer or meditation . Opinions on the value of visualization vary within Christianity . In Catholicism , visualization plays a central role in the recitation of the Rosary , where it may be used to visualize Biblical scenes. In Eastern Orthodoxy , however, image-based prayer is generally frowned upon, because it is seen as an opening for demonic influence, and as contradictory to

3500-672: The Allegory of the Cave : a prisoner, bound and unable to move, sits with his back to a fire watching the shadows cast on the cave wall in front of him by people carrying objects behind his back. These people and the objects they carry are representations of real things in the world. Unenlightened man is like the prisoner, explains Socrates, a human being making mental images from the sense data that he experiences. The eighteenth-century philosopher Bishop George Berkeley proposed similar ideas in his theory of idealism . Berkeley stated that reality

3600-523: The brain that function similarly during both imagery and perception, such as the visual cortex and higher visual areas. Kosslyn and colleagues (1999) showed that the early visual cortex, Area 17 and Area 18/19, is activated during visual imagery. They found that inhibition of these areas through repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) resulted in impaired visual perception and imagery. Furthermore, research conducted with lesioned patients has revealed that visual imagery and visual perception have

3700-423: The chromosomes apart. His work looks at specialised structures known as kinetochores and the mechanisms which monitor the correct attachment of microtubules to the chromosomes. Tomo Tanaka studies the processes by which eukaryotic cells maintain their genetic integrity. His group use budding yeast to study chromosome duplication and segregation. By understanding the processes that occur during cell division, it

3800-498: The fusiform gyrus . Tabi et al. (2022) found significant positive correlations between visual imagery vividness and the volumes of the hippocampus and primary visual cortex. Significant positive correlations were also obtained between VVIQ scores and hippocampal structures including Bilateral CA1, CA3, CA4 and Granule Cell (GC) and Molecular Layer (ML) of the Dentate Gyrus (DG). Follow-up analysis revealed that visual imagery

3900-580: The light spectrum visible to the human eye and converting such signals into recognizable images. Aside from sculpture and other physical activities that can create three-dimensional images from solid material, some modern techniques, such as holography , can create three-dimensional images that are reproducible but intangible to human touch. Some photographic processes can now render the illusion of depth in an otherwise "flat" image, but "3-D photography" ( stereoscopy ) or " 3-D film " are optical illusions that require special devices such as eyeglasses to create

4000-440: The nucleus . This work is helping to explain how a cell's nucleus is organised, an area that has particular importance to human diseases such as inherited genetic conditions which can have modified or disrupted organelles. Jason Swedlow is a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow and investigates how chromosomes are separated during cell division. The driving force behind this process are strands known as microtubules , which pull

4100-481: The Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Benjamin argues that the mechanical reproduction of images, which had accelerated through photographic processes in the previous one hundred years or so, inevitably degrades the "authenticity" or quasi-religious "aura" of the original object. One example is Leonardo da Vinci 's Mona Lisa , originally painted as a portrait, but much later, with its display as an art object, it developed

Centre for Gene Regulation and Expression - Misplaced Pages Continue

4200-462: The Greek philosopher Plato described our apparent reality as a copy of a higher order of universal forms . As copies of a higher reality, the things we perceive in the world, tangible or abstract, are inevitably imperfect. Book 7 of The Republic offers Plato's " Allegory of the Cave ," where ordinary human life is compared to being a prisoner in a darkened cave who believes that shadows projected onto

4300-458: The aims of hesychastic prayer. In general, Vajrayana Buddhism and Bön utilize sophisticated visualization or imaginal (in the language of Jean Houston of Transpersonal Psychology ) processes in the Tulpa construction of the yidam sadhana , kye-rim , and dzog-rim modes of meditation and in the yantra , thangka , and mandala traditions, where holding the fully realized form in

4400-428: The authors propose that these parietal and prefrontal regions, and occipital regions, are part of a network involved in mediating the manipulation of visual imagery. These results suggest a top-down activation of visual areas in visual imagery. Using Dynamic Causal Modeling (DCM) to determine the connectivity of cortical networks, Ishai et al. (2010) demonstrated that activation of the network mediating visual imagery

4500-535: The brain adapts to neuroplasticity to amend any occlusions for perception . It can be thought that the neocortex is a sophisticated memory storage warehouse in which data received as an input from sensory systems are compartmentalized via the cerebral cortex. This would essentially allow for shapes to be identified, although given the lack of filtering input produced internally, one may as a consequence, hallucinate—essentially seeing something that isn't received as an input externally but rather internal (i.e. an error in

4600-565: The brain also seems optimized to handle the sort of mathematics that constantly computes a series of topologically-based images rather than calculating a mathematical model of an object. Recent studies in neurology and neuropsychology on mental imagery have further questioned the "mind as serial computer" theory, arguing instead that human mental imagery manifests both visually and kinesthetically . For example, several studies have provided evidence that people are slower at rotating line drawings of objects such as hands in directions incompatible with

4700-530: The brain’s visual areas while subjects imagined visual objects and scenes. The previously mentioned and numerous related studies have led to a relative consensus within cognitive science , psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy on the neural status of mental images. In general, researchers agree that, while there is no homunculus inside the head viewing these mental images, our brains do form and maintain mental images as image-like wholes. The problem of exactly how these images are stored and manipulated within

4800-498: The cave's wall comprise actual reality. Since art is itself an imitation, it is a copy of that copy and all the more imperfect. Artistic images, then, not only misdirect human reason away from understanding the higher forms of true reality, but in imitating the bad behaviors of humans in depictions of the gods, they can corrupt individuals and society. Echoes of such criticism have persisted across time, accelerating as image-making technologies have developed and expanded immensely since

4900-419: The centre to gain fresh understanding of protein function and cell behaviour. The centre is studying many aspects of the cell cycle , including the way in which chromosomes replicate and separate during cell division and how DNA damage is detected. Failure of these events can lead to major faults within a genome , potentially leading to the rise of cancerous cells. The centre is also investigating how DNA

5000-651: The complex cognitive operations of the brain and the human visual system. " Flicker fusion ", the " phi phenomenon ", and " beta movement " are among the terms that have replaced "persistence of vision", though no one term seems adequate to describe the process. Image-making seems to have been common to virtually all human cultures since at least the Paleolithic era . Prehistoric examples of rock art —including cave paintings , petroglyphs , rock reliefs , and geoglyphs —have been found on every inhabited continent. Many of these images seem to have served various purposes: as

5100-488: The experience of "perceiving" some object, event, or scene but occurs when the relevant object, event, or scene is not actually present to the senses. There are sometimes episodes, particularly on falling asleep ( hypnagogic imagery ) and waking up ( hypnopompic imagery ), when the mental imagery may be dynamic, phantasmagoric, and involuntary in character, repeatedly presenting identifiable objects or actions, spilling over from waking events, or defying perception, presenting

SECTION 50

#1732797571819

5200-411: The expression, mental images or imagery can comprise information from any source of sensory input; one may experience auditory images , olfactory images, and so forth. However, the majority of philosophical and scientific investigations of the topic focus on visual mental imagery. It has sometimes been assumed that, like humans, some types of animals are capable of experiencing mental images. Due to

5300-427: The filtering of segmented sensory data from the cerebral cortex may result in one seeing, feeling, hearing or experiencing something that is inconsistent with reality). Not all people have the same mental imagery ability. For many, when the eyes are closed, the perception of darkness prevails. However, some people are able to perceive colorful, dynamic imagery (McKellar, 1957). The use of hallucinogenic drugs increases

5400-493: The form of idols . In recent years, militant extremist groups such as the Taliban and ISIS have destroyed centuries-old artifacts, especially those associated with other religions. Virtually all cultures have produced images and applied different meanings or applications to them. The loss of knowledge about the context and connection of an image to its object is likely to result in different perceptions and interpretations of

5500-445: The form of a generic propositional code that stores the meaning of the concept not the image itself. The propositional codes can either be descriptive of the image or symbolic. They are then transferred back into verbal and visual code to form the mental image. The functional-equivalency hypothesis is that mental images are "internal representations" that work in the same way as the actual perception of physical objects. In other words,

5600-558: The fundamentally introspective (reflective) nature of the phenomenon, it has been difficult to assess whether or not non-human animals experience mental imagery. Philosophers such as George Berkeley and David Hume , and early experimental psychologists such as Wilhelm Wundt and William James , understood ideas in general to be mental images. Today, it is very widely believed that much imagery functions as mental representations (or mental models ), playing an important role in memory and thinking. William Brant (2013, p. 12) traces

5700-631: The grounds that "the eyes of the mind are more easily directed to those objects which we have seen, than to those which we have only heard". The concept of "the mind's eye" first appeared in English in Chaucer's (c. 1387) Man of Law's Tale in his Canterbury Tales , where he tells us that one of the three men dwelling in a castle was blind, and could only see with "the eyes of his mind"; namely, those eyes "with which all men see after they have become blind". The biological foundation of mental imagery

5800-407: The horizontal area of their visual mental image was reduced. Visual imagery is the ability to create mental representations of things, people, and places that are absent from an individual’s visual field. This ability is crucial to problem-solving tasks, memory, and spatial reasoning. Neuroscientists have found that imagery and perception share many of the same neural substrates , or areas of

5900-527: The human brain, in particular within language and communication, remains a fertile area of study. One of the longest-running research topics on the mental image has basis on the fact that people report large individual differences in the vividness of their images. Special questionnaires have been developed to assess such differences, including the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) developed by David Marks . Laboratory studies have suggested that

6000-755: The hypothesis that a mental image is the reactivation, from memory, of brain representations normally activated during the perception of an external stimulus. In other words, if perceiving an apple activates contour and location and shape and color representations in the brain’s visual system, then imagining an apple activates some or all of these same representations using information stored in memory. Early evidence for this idea came from neuropsychology. Patients with brain damage that impairs perception in specific ways, for example by damaging shape or color representations, seem to generally to have impaired mental imagery in similar ways. Studies of brain function in normal human brains support this same conclusion, showing activity in

6100-570: The illusion of depth. Copies of 3-dimensional images have traditionally had to be crafted one at a time, usually by an individual or team of artisans . In the modern age, the development of plastics and other technologies made it possible to create multiple copies of a 3-dimensional object with less effort; the advent and development of " 3-D printing " has expanded that capability. "Moving" two-dimensional images are actually illusions of movement perceived when still images are displayed in sequence, each image lasting less, and sometimes much less, than

SECTION 60

#1732797571819

6200-529: The image and even of the original object itself. Through human history, one dominant form of imagery has been in relation to religion and spirituality. Such images, whether in the form of idols that are objects of worship or that represent some other spiritual state or quality, have a different status as artifacts when copies of such images sever links to the spiritual or supernatural. The German philosopher and essayist Walter Benjamin brought particular attention to this point in his 1935 essay "The Work of Art in

6300-471: The image's creator intended them. An image may be taken simply as a more or less "accurate" copy of a person, place, thing, or event. It may represent an abstract concept, such as the political power of a ruler or ruling class, a practical or moral lesson, an object for spiritual or religious veneration, or an object—human or otherwise—to be desired. It may also be regarded for its purely aesthetic qualities, rarity, or monetary value. Such reactions can depend on

6400-503: The image. In modern times, the development of " non-fungible tokens " (NFTs) has been touted as an attempt to create "authentic" or "unique" images that have a monetary value, existing only in digital format. This assumption has been widely debated. The development of synthetic acoustic technologies and the creation of sound art have led to considering the possibilities of a sound-image made up of irreducible phonic substance beyond linguistic or musicological analysis. A still image

6500-413: The images and their perceiver exist in the brain. To use the analogy of the computer screen, these critics argue that cognitive science and psychology have been unsuccessful in identifying either the component in the brain (i.e., "hardware") or the mental processes that store these images (i.e. "software"). Cognitive psychologists and (later) cognitive neuroscientists have empirically tested some of

6600-405: The inner perception of mental images actually occurs. This is sometimes called the " homunculus problem" (see also the mind's eye ). The problem is similar to asking how the images you see on a computer screen exist in the memory of the computer. To scientific materialism , mental images and the perception of them must be brain-states. According to critics, scientific realists cannot explain where

6700-460: The interference between the motor and visual imagery system could be induced by having participants physically handle actual 3D blocks glued together to form objects similar to those depicted in the line-drawings. Amorim et al. have shown that, when a cylindrical "head" was added to Shepard and Metzler's line drawings of 3D block figures, participants were quicker and more accurate at solving mental rotation problems. They argue that motoric embodiment

6800-405: The invention of the daguerreotype and other photographic processes in the mid-19th century. By the late 20th century, works like John Berger's Ways of Seeing and Susan Sontag 's On Photography questioned the hidden assumptions of power, race, sex, and class encoded in even realistic images, and how those assumptions and such images may implicate the viewer in the voyeuristic position of

6900-418: The joints of the human body, and that patients with painful, injured arms are slower at mentally rotating line drawings of the hand from the side of the injured arm. Some psychologists, including Kosslyn, have argued that such results occur because of interference in the brain between distinct systems in the brain that process the visual and motor mental imagery. Subsequent neuroimaging studies showed that

7000-694: The making of images, even though the extent of that proscription has varied with time, place, and sect or denomination of a given religion. In Judaism, one of the Ten Commandments given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai forbids the making of "any graven image, or any likeness [of any thing] that [is] in heaven above, or that [is] in the earth beneath, or that [is] in the water under earth." In Christian history, periods of iconoclasm (the destruction of images, especially those with religious meanings or connotations) have broken out from time to time, and some sects and denominations have rejected or severely limited

7100-436: The mind's eye—to have a perceptual experience in the absence of visual input. For example, PET scans have shown that when subjects, seated in a room, imagine they are at their front door starting to walk either to the left or right, activation begins in the visual association cortex , the parietal cortex , and the prefrontal cortex —all higher cognitive processing centers of the brain. A biological basis for mental imagery

7200-422: The mind. These include the dual-code theory , the propositional theory, and the functional-equivalency hypothesis. The dual-code theory, created by Allan Paivio in 1971, is the theory that we use two separate codes to represent information in our brains: image codes and verbal codes. Image codes are things like thinking of a picture of a dog when you are thinking of a dog, whereas a verbal code would be to think of

7300-406: The network mediating visual imagery is composed of attentional mechanisms arising from the posterior parietal cortex and the prefrontal cortex. Vividness of visual imagery is a crucial component of an individual’s ability to perform cognitive tasks requiring imagery. Vividness of visual imagery varies not only between individuals but also within individuals. Dijkstra and colleagues (2017) found that

7400-455: The neural substrates of visual imagery and perception overlap in areas beyond the visual cortex and the degree of this overlap in these areas correlates with the vividness of mental representations during imagery. Mental images are an important topic in classical and modern philosophy, as they are central to the study of knowledge . In the Republic , Book VII, Plato has Socrates present

7500-584: The non-representational forms of imagery. The notion of a "mind's eye" goes back at least to Cicero 's reference to mentis oculi during his discussion of the orator's appropriate use of simile . In this discussion, Cicero observed that allusions to "the Syrtis of his patrimony" and "the Charybdis of his possessions" involved similes that were "too far-fetched"; and he advised the orator to, instead, just speak of "the rock" and "the gulf" (respectively)—on

7600-473: The object had been rotated. Shepard and Metzler found the opposite: a linear relationship between the degree of rotation in the mental imagery task and the time it took participants to reach their answer. This mental rotation finding implied that the human mind—and the human brain—maintains and manipulates mental images as topographic and topological wholes, an implication that was quickly put to test by psychologists. Stephen Kosslyn and colleagues showed in

7700-577: The philosophical questions related to whether and how the human brain uses mental imagery in cognition. One theory of the mind that was examined in these experiments was the "brain as serial computer" philosophical metaphor of the 1970s. Psychologist Zenon Pylyshyn theorized that the human mind processes mental images by decomposing them into an underlying mathematical proposition. Roger Shepard and Jacqueline Metzler challenged that view by presenting subjects with 2D line drawings of groups of 3D block "objects" and asking them to determine whether that "object"

7800-523: The philosophy of art. While such studies inevitably deal with issues of meaning, another approach to signification was suggested by the American philosopher, logician, and semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce . "Images" are one type of the broad category of "signs" proposed by Peirce. Although his ideas are complex and have changed over time, the three categories of signs that he distinguished stand out: A single image may exist in all three categories at

7900-491: The picture of a dog brought to mind when the word dog is read is interpreted in the same way as if the person was observing an actual dog before them. Research has occurred to designate a specific neural correlate of imagery; however, studies show a multitude of results. Most studies published before 2001 suggest neural correlates of visual imagery occur in Brodmann area 17 . Auditory performance imagery have been observed in

8000-555: The pictures summoned by athletes during training or before a competition, outlining each step they will take to accomplish their goal. When a musician hears a song, they can sometimes "see" the song notes in their head, as well as hear them with all their tonal qualities. This is considered different from an after-effect, such as an afterimage . Calling up an image in our minds can be a voluntary act, so it can be characterized as being under various degrees of conscious control. There are several theories as to how mental images are formed in

8100-441: The point at coordinates (x,y). In literature, a " mental image " may be developed through words and phrases to which the senses respond. It involves picturing an image mentally, also called imagining, hence imagery. It can both be figurative and literal. Mental image In the philosophy of mind , neuroscience , and cognitive science , a mental image is an experience that, on most occasions, significantly resembles

8200-455: The premotor areas, precunes, and medial Brodmann area 40 . Auditory imagery in general occurs across participants in the temporal voice area (TVA), which allows top-down imaging manipulations, processing, and storage of audition functions. Olfactory imagery research shows activation in the anterior piriform cortex and the posterior piriform cortex; experts in olfactory imagery have larger gray matter associated to olfactory areas. Tactile imagery

8300-452: The same representational organization. This has been concluded from patients in which impaired perception also experience visual imagery deficits at the same level of the mental representation. Behrmann and colleagues (1992) describe a patient C.K., who provided evidence challenging the view that visual imagery and visual perception rely on the same representational system. C.K. was a 33-year old man with visual object agnosia acquired after

8400-471: The same time. The Statue of Liberty provides an example. While there have been countless two-dimensional and three-dimensional "reproductions" of the statue (i.e., "icons" themselves), the statue itself exists as The nature of images, whether three-dimensional or two-dimensional, created for a specific purpose or only for aesthetic pleasure, has continued to provoke questions and even condemnation at different times and places. In his dialogue, The Republic ,

8500-498: The scientific use of the phrase "mental images" back to John Tyndall 's 1870 speech called the "Scientific Use of the Imagination". Some have suggested that images are best understood to be, by definition, a form of inner, mental, or neural representation. Others reject the view that the image experience may be identical with (or directly caused by) any such representation in the mind or the brain, but do not take account of

8600-421: The study stated that "mental practice alone seems to be sufficient to promote the modulation of neural circuits involved in the early stages of motor skill learning". Imagery training has been effective in a series of studies, mostly in sport where participants are taught formal skills to improve a mental image. Imagery training has also been effective with individuals with low abilities. Mental visualization

8700-447: The subconscious and affective, thus evading direct inquiry through contemplative reasoning. By doing so such axiomatic images let us know what we shall desire (liberalism, in a snapshot: the crunchy honey-flavored cereals and the freshly-pressed orange juice in the back of a suburban one-family home) and from what we shall obstain (communism, in a snapshot: lifeless crowds of men and machinery marching towards certain perdition accompanied by

8800-434: The subject's ability to consciously access mental imagery including synaestesia (McKellar, 1957). Furthermore, the pineal gland is a hypothetical candidate for producing a mind's eye. Rick Strassman and others have postulated that during near-death experiences (NDEs) and dreaming , the gland might secrete the hallucinogenic chemical N , N -Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) to produce internal visuals when external sensory data

8900-788: The subjectively reported variations in imagery vividness are associated with different neural states within the brain and also different cognitive competences such as the ability to accurately recall information presented in pictures Rodway, Gillies and Schepman used a novel long-term change detection task to determine whether participants with low and high vividness scores on the VVIQ2 showed any performance differences. Rodway et al. found that high vividness participants were significantly more accurate at detecting salient changes to pictures compared to low-vividness participants. This replicated an earlier study. Recent studies have found that individual differences in VVIQ scores can be used to predict changes in

9000-579: The tunes of Soviet Russian songs). What makes those images so powerful is that it is only of relative minor relevance for the stabilization of such images whether they actually capture and correspond with the multiple layers of reality, or not. Despite, or perhaps because of, the widespread use of religious and spiritual imagery worldwide, the making of images and the depiction of gods or religious subjects has been subject to criticism, censorship, and criminal penalties. The Abrahamic religions ( Judaism , Christianity , and Islam ) all have had admonitions against

9100-512: The use of religious imagery. Islam tends to discourage religious depictions, sometimes quite rigorously, and often extends that to other forms of realistic imagery, favoring calligraphy or geometric designs instead. Depending on time and place, photographs and broadcast images in Islamic societies may be less subject to outright prohibition. In any religion, restrictions on image-making are especially targeted to avoid depictions of "false gods" in

9200-450: The value of our mental images of the world by the quality and quantity of the sense data that they can explain, then the most valuable mental image—or theory—that we currently have is that the world has a real independent existence and that humans have successfully evolved by building up and adapting patterns of mental images to explain it. This is an important idea in scientific thought . Critics of scientific realism ask how

9300-414: The variation in vividness of visual imagery is dependent on the degree to which the neural substrates of visual imagery overlap with those of visual perception. They found that overlap between imagery and perception in the entire visual cortex, the parietal precuneus lobule, the right parietal cortex, and the medial frontal cortex predicted the vividness of a mental representation. The activated regions beyond

9400-407: The viewer's context. A religious image in a church may be regarded differently than the same image mounted in a museum. Some might view it simply as an object to be bought or sold. Viewers' reactions will also be guided or shaped by their education, class, race, and other contexts. The study of emotional sensations and their relationship to any given image falls into the categories of aesthetics and

9500-549: The visual areas are believed to drive the imagery-specific processes rather than the visual processes shared with perception. It has been suggested that the precuneus contributes to vividness by selecting important details for imagery. The medial frontal cortex is suspected to be involved in the retrieval and integration of information from the parietal and visual areas during working memory and visual imagery. The right parietal cortex appears to be important in attention, visual inspection, and stabilization of mental representations. Thus,

9600-591: The visual system's capabilities. On the other hand, some processes can be used to create visual representations of objects that are otherwise inaccessible to the human visual system. These include microscopy for the magnification of minute objects, telescopes that can observe objects at great distances, X-rays that can visually represent the interior structures of the human body (among other objects), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) , positron emission tomography (PET scans) , and others. Such processes often rely on detecting electromagnetic radiation that occurs beyond

9700-413: The visual, auditory, and kinesthetic systems whenever possible. Educational researchers have examined whether the experience of mental imagery affects the degree of learning. For example, imagining playing a five-finger piano exercise (mental practice) resulted in a significant improvement in performance over no mental practice—though not as significant as that produced by physical practice. The authors of

9800-491: The vividness of visual imagery can be measured objectively. Logie, Pernet, Buonocore and Della Sala (2011) used behavioural and fMRI data for mental rotation from individuals reporting vivid and poor imagery on the VVIQ. Groups differed in brain activation patterns suggesting that the groups performed the same tasks in different ways. These findings help to explain the lack of association previously reported between VVIQ scores and mental rotation performance. Beyond visual imagery

9900-538: The word "dog". Another example is the difference between thinking of abstract words such as justice or love and thinking of concrete words like elephant or chair. When abstract words are thought of, it is easier to think of them in terms of verbal codes—finding words that define them or describe them. With concrete words, it is often easier to use image codes and bring up a picture of a human or chair in your mind rather than words associated or descriptive of them. The propositional theory involves storing images in

10000-416: Was in particular correlated with the four subfields presented in the above illustration (Tabi et al., 2022). The thalamus has been found to be discrete to other components in that it processes all forms of perceptional data relayed from both lower and higher components of the brain. Damage to this component can produce permanent perceptual damage, however when damage is inflicted upon the cerebral cortex ,

#818181