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Neural correlates of mental rotation in aphantasia

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 7, 3:00 – 5:00 pm, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballrooms

Rain Paul¹, Kelsey Roberts, Theo Rhodes, Sien Hu; ¹SUNY Oswego

Mental rotation refers to the cognitive ability to manipulate a visual image in three-dimensional space internally and imagine it from various orientations. Some people are unable to use visual imagery in cognitive processing, a condition known as aphantasia (Zeman et al., 2015). Previous research on mental rotation reported longer response time (RT) but comparable accuracy in aphantasics (people with a lack sensory mental imagery) than controls. The current study aimed to investigate the behavioral and neural differences between people with and without aphantasia. Subjects performed a mental rotation task (Shepard & Metzler, 1971) in fMRI. They were presented pairs of three-dimensional objects side by side. For each object, four different orientations were generated by a rotation in depth, 0°, 50°, 100°, and 150°. In each pair, the object on the right can be rotated from the object on the left (the “identical” condition) or from the mirrored version of the object on the left (the “mirrored” condition). Subjects pressed a button with their right thumb for “identical” and right index finger for “mirrored”. Aphantasics showed no difference in RT in all orientations and no difference in accuracy in 0°, 50°, and 100° orientations than controls, though they were lower in accuracy in 150°. In identical and mirrored conditions, aphantasics showed greater activations in the frontal and parietal regions as well as areas in the default mode network than controls. These results suggested that aphantasics recruit additional brain regions in cognitive control to compensate for lacking mental visualization during mental rotation.

Topic Area: ATTENTION: Spatial