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EEG evidence for shared and distinct neural activity during auditory and visual imagery in musicians

Poster Session F - Tuesday, March 10, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Gabriela Pérez-Acosta¹ (), Oscar Yanez-Suarez², Miguel Ángel Porta-García³, José-Luis Díaz⁴; ¹Faculty of Music, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, ²Neuroimaging Lab Department of Electrical Engineering, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, México, ³Centro de Investigación e Innovación en Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicación (INFOTEC), Consejo Nacional de Humanidades, Ciencias y Tecnologías (CONAHCYT), México, ⁴Faculty of Medicine, Department of History and Philosophy of Medicine, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

There is substantial evidence supporting shared neural mechanisms between imagery and perception. However, the psychophysiological exploration of modality-independent mental imagery and its potential reliance on other cognitive processes—such as attention and memory—remains limited. We aimed to investigate the shared and specific EEG activity patterns associated with auditory (musical) and visual imagery. Twelve trained musicians completed perception and imagery tasks for auditory and visual stimuli, each with two levels of complexity. Mean power differences were calculated across tasks and conditions for the alpha, beta, and gamma bands. For the alpha band, increased mean relative power was observed in occipital and parietal regions throughout the paradigm. Regarding the complexity of the imagery tasks, within-modality contrasts (auditory simple vs. auditory complex) showed small-magnitude power differences significant only at a few midline locations. In contrast, cross-modality comparisons (auditory simple vs. visual simple) revealed a greater number of significant locations, mainly in central and occipital regions, with positive differences for mean alpha power and negative for beta and gamma bands. Relative to baseline, the main effects were broader beta power increases associated with visual imagery and shared patterns for both imagery modalities, including enhanced gamma power in right frontal sites, increased beta activity in frontal and prefrontal regions, and bilateral parietal beta increases. These findings support the hypothesis that mental imagery engages not only modality-specific sensory areas but also regions related to memory retrieval, attention, semantic processing, and motor preparation.

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