ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2021
Why do imagery and perception look and feel so different?
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 102 citations in OpenAlex.
- Mental image vividness and aphantasia judgements are fundamentally compromised by overlooked definition problems.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Review
- Engineering Pareidolia: Mental Imagery, Perceptual Scaffolding, and Visual Creativity.Brain sciences · 2026Article
- Why do we need imagination-reality monitoring?Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- The human brain mechanisms of afterimages: From networks to cortical layers.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Age-related differences in perceptual and mental imagery abilities.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Whole-brain modular dynamics at rest predict sensorimotor learning performance.Network neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Laminar dissociation of feedforward and feedback in high-level ventral visual cortex during imagery and perception.iScience · 2024Article
- Consciousness and sleep.Neuron · 2024Review
- Uncovering the Role of the Early Visual Cortex in Visual Mental Imagery.Vision (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Confidence ratings do not distinguish imagination from reality.Journal of vision · 2024Article
- Real-world implications of aphantasia: episodic recall of eyewitnesses with aphantasia is less complete but no less accurate than typical imagers.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Neural Representations in Visual and Parietal Cortex Differentiate between Imagined, Perceived, and Illusory Experiences.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2023Article
- Rumination as a Transdiagnostic Phenomenon in the 21st Century: The Flow Model of Rumination.Brain sciences · 2023Review
- Synchronous motor imagery and visual feedback of finger movement elicit the moving rubber hand illusion, at least in illusion-susceptible individuals.Experimental brain research · 2023Article
- Subjective signal strength distinguishes reality from imagination.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Modelling perception as a hierarchical competition differentiates imagined, veridical, and hallucinated percepts.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2023Article
- Photographs of Actions: What Makes Them Special Cues to Social Perception.Brain sciences · 2021Review
- Offline perception: an introduction.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- V1 as an egocentric cognitive map.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Despite the past few decades of research providing convincing evidence of the similarities in function and neural mechanisms between imagery and perception, for most of us, the experience of the two are undeniably different, why? Here, we review and discuss the differences between imagery and perception and the possible underlying causes of these differences, from function to neural mechanisms. Specifically, we discuss the directional flow of information (top-down versus bottom-up), the differences in targeted cortical layers in primary visual cortex and possible different neural mechanisms of modulation versus excitation. For the first time in history, neuroscience is beginning to shed light on this long-held mystery of why imagery and perception look and feel so different. This article is part of the theme issue 'Offline perception: voluntary and spontaneous perceptual experiences without matching external stimulation'.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.