Re: The Mind's Eye

Crosby_M (CrosbyM@po1.cpi.bls.gov)
Tue, 8 Oct 1996 11:47:00 -0400

On Thu, 26 Sep 1996 14:07:15 -0400 QueeneMUSE@aol.com wrote:
<Anders: or does anybody know When one imagines a visual stimuli, does
it also register (measurably) as a change in the visual part of the
brain? [snip] Have there been any studies about this "internal sight'
that may be helpful to neural/retinal VR?>

On Thu, 26 Sep 1996 14:45:00 -0400 I wrote:
<I recall reading, not too long ago, Science News most likely, something
about [this]>

I happened to find the reference I was thinking of. It was a brief
12/02/95 Science News article called "Brain Scans Set Sights On Mind+s
Eye" that summarized PET scan studies by psychologist Stephen M. Kosslyn
and colleagues at Harvard that was reported more fully in the 30 Nov 95
issue of Nature.

Here are a couple of snips from the Science News piece:

Stephen M. Kosslyn: "The fact that stored visual information can affect
processing in the earliest visual areas suggests that knowledge can
fundamentally [influence] what one sees."

Larry R. Squire, a neuroscientist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center
in San Diego, commenting on Kosslyn+s work: "This is a nice
demonstration that the visual cortex is activated by mental images in
the same ways it would be activated by visual perceptions."

Mark Crosby