ArticleNature communications2023
Subjective signal strength distinguishes reality from imagination.
Article in Nature communications, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 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.
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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
33 citing papers in PubMed.
- Towards an integrative neuroscience of metacognition.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2026Review
- Haptic illusion during finger-held disk rotation: revisiting a deceptively simple illusion.Experimental brain research · 2026Article
- Imagery: Interference, facilitation, and theory.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2026Review
- Vividness of mental imagery reflects a broad range of internally generated visual experiences.Royal Society open science · 2026Article
- Traffic jams: music and traffic noise interact to influence the vividness, sentiment, and spatiotemporal properties of directed mental imagery.Humanities & social sciences communications · 2026Article
- Why do we need imagination-reality monitoring?Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- Measuring the Subjective Signal Strength: Validating Persian Vividness of Visual Mental Imagery Questionnaire-2.Brain and behavior · 2026Article
- Vivid imagery is reported faster than weak imagery.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- Beyond the reducing valve: towards a computational neurophenomenology of altered states via deep neural networks.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Validation of the Chinese version of the scientific imagination inventory in primary school students.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- The exploration of consciousness in insects.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Voice-Hearing in the General Population: The Relationship Between Inner Speech, Absorption, and Voice-Like Hallucinations.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2025Article
- The human brain mechanisms of afterimages: From networks to cortical layers.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Shared and Diverging Neural Dynamics Underlying False and Veridical Perception.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Aesthetic experiences across visual perception and mental imagery: Behaviorally indistinguishable, neurally distinct.iScience · 2025Article
- Theories of consciousness from the perspective of an embedded processes view.Psychological review · 2025Review
- Vivid imagery of objects primes perception of subliminal spatial information.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2025Article
- Centering cognitive neuroscience on task demands and generalization.Nature neuroscience · 2024Review
- Replay-triggered brain-wide activation in humans.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Subtitled speech: the neural mechanisms of ticker-tape synaesthesia.Brain : a journal of neurology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Humans are voracious imaginers, with internal simulations supporting memory, planning and decision-making. Because the neural mechanisms supporting imagery overlap with those supporting perception, a foundational question is how reality and imagination are kept apart. One possibility is that the intention to imagine is used to identify and discount self-generated signals during imagery. Alternatively, because internally generated signals are generally weaker, sensory strength is used to index reality. Traditional psychology experiments struggle to investigate this issue as subjects can rapidly learn that real stimuli are in play. Here, we combined one-trial-per-participant psychophysics with computational modelling and neuroimaging to show that imagined and perceived signals are in fact intermixed, with judgments of reality being determined by whether this intermixed signal is strong enough to cross a reality threshold. A consequence of this account is that when virtual or imagined signals are strong enough, they become subjectively indistinguishable from reality.
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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.