ReviewBrain topography2025
How Interoception and the Insula Shape Mental Imagery and Aphantasia.
Review in Brain topography, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 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
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Two weeks to tune in: Evaluating the effects of a short-term body scan on interoception.Applied psychology. Health and well-being · 2025Trial
- Modality- and sequence-specific effects of guided imagery on stress and neuroendocrine markers in young adults: A pilot randomized crossover study.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2026Article
- Windows to the goal: Pupillary working memory signatures prospectively adapt to task demands.iScience · 2026Article
- Interoception predicts mental imagery vividness: exploring a key relationship.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The aphantasia-hyperphantasia spectrum.Neuropsychologia · 2026Article
- From dots to faces: individual differences in visual imagery capacity predict the content of Ganzflicker-induced hallucinations.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- The interoceptive origins of mental imagery: an evolutionary account.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- The role of subjective interoception in autobiographical deficits in aphantasia.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Neurodiversity in mental simulation: conceptual but not visual imagery priming modulates perception across the imagery vividness spectrum.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Article
- Impaired interoception in Colombian victims of armed conflict with PTSD: a preliminary HEP study.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Interoception, insula, and agency: a predictive coding account of aphantasia.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
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.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
A major question in cognitive neuroscience is understanding the neural basis of mental imagery, particularly in cases of its absence, known as aphantasia. While research in this field has focused on the role of sensory domains, we propose that the key to understanding imagery lies in the intertwining of sensory processing and autonomic responses. Interoception plays a crucial role in mental imagery by anchoring experiences in first-person physiological signals, providing a self-referential perspective, and grounding the imagery in the body while also enabling its emotional aspects. Moreover, interoception contributes to the sense of agency and volitional control, as well as body schema-hallmarks of voluntary mental imagery. Therefore, imagery should be approached as an integrated phenomenon that combines sensory-specific information with interoceptive signals. At the neural level, this process engages the insula and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), regions vital for synthesizing information across cognitive, emotional, and physical domains, as well as for supporting self-awareness. From this perspective, aphantasia may reflect a suboptimal functioning of the insula/ACC, which can account for its associations with deficits in autobiographical memory, emotion perception, and conditions such as autism and dyspraxia.
Indexed as
Identifiers
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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.