Pub Date : 2025-10-06DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109293
Bence Nanay
Research into imagery vividness in recent year has been predominantly about the difference between aphantasics and the rest of us (or, more rarely, between hyperphantasics and the rest of us). But differences in imagery vividness have great impact on a number of important psychological phenomena in non-aphantasics as well. Hence, instead of the binary focus on aphantasics vs. the rest of us, more attention should be devoted to how differences along the aphantasia-hyperphantasia spectrum correspond to other gradual differences, in decision-making, emotion-regulation, cravings, mental health issues and so on.
{"title":"The aphantasia-hyperphantasia spectrum","authors":"Bence Nanay","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109293","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109293","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Research into imagery vividness in recent year has been predominantly about the difference between aphantasics and the rest of us (or, more rarely, between hyperphantasics and the rest of us). But differences in imagery vividness have great impact on a number of important psychological phenomena in non-aphantasics as well. Hence, instead of the binary focus on aphantasics vs. the rest of us, more attention should be devoted to how differences along the aphantasia-hyperphantasia spectrum correspond to other gradual differences, in decision-making, emotion-regulation, cravings, mental health issues and so on.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"220 ","pages":"Article 109293"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145252145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-04DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109292
Peijuan Li , Weiye Xie , Xin Tan , Chao Zhang , Linzhu Han , Carol A. Seger , Zhiya Liu
How do brain regions specialized for number processing interact within broader neural systems to support learning to identify and apply numeric rules? Participants performed a number rule learning task in which they viewed sequences of three numbers and across trials identified via trial and error which of 4 possible rules the number sequences followed. Rules were chosen to differ in numeric and executive control task demands. Constrained Principal Components Analysis identified three networks supporting performance in this task. One network overlapped with the dorsal and ventral attentional networks and included both known number sensitive regions in the Intraparietal Sulcus (IPS) along with motor planning associated regions (premotor and SMA) and visual attention associated regions (insula and anterior cingulate). The time course of activity in this network was consistent with it playing a role in processing the numerosity of the stimuli, forming a decision, and performing an associated motor response. A second network followed the time course of visual presentation of the number stimuli and involved visual cortex broadly, including regions associated with the number form area (NFA). A third network was sensitive to rule complexity, with greater activity at the time of decision for rules requiring more complex evaluation. This network included regions of the medial prefrontal and parietal cortex and inferior parietal cortex often associated with the default mode network. Overall, these results demonstrate how multiple neural networks underlying both numeric and nonnumeric processing can interact to allow people to make mathematical decisions.
{"title":"Neural networks recruited for numerical rule learning and application","authors":"Peijuan Li , Weiye Xie , Xin Tan , Chao Zhang , Linzhu Han , Carol A. Seger , Zhiya Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109292","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109292","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>How do brain regions specialized for number processing interact within broader neural systems to support learning to identify and apply numeric rules? Participants performed a number rule learning task in which they viewed sequences of three numbers and across trials identified via trial and error which of 4 possible rules the number sequences followed. Rules were chosen to differ in numeric and executive control task demands. Constrained Principal Components Analysis identified three networks supporting performance in this task. One network overlapped with the dorsal and ventral attentional networks and included both known number sensitive regions in the Intraparietal Sulcus (IPS) along with motor planning associated regions (premotor and SMA) and visual attention associated regions (insula and anterior cingulate). The time course of activity in this network was consistent with it playing a role in processing the numerosity of the stimuli, forming a decision, and performing an associated motor response. A second network followed the time course of visual presentation of the number stimuli and involved visual cortex broadly, including regions associated with the number form area (NFA). A third network was sensitive to rule complexity, with greater activity at the time of decision for rules requiring more complex evaluation. This network included regions of the medial prefrontal and parietal cortex and inferior parietal cortex often associated with the default mode network. Overall, these results demonstrate how multiple neural networks underlying both numeric and nonnumeric processing can interact to allow people to make mathematical decisions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"220 ","pages":"Article 109292"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145239455","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-03DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109291
Guanghui Zhai , Yang Feng , Xin Ling , Jiahui Su , Yifan Liu , Yiwei Li , Yunpeng Jiang , Xia Wu
Human attention is a limited resource increasingly taxed by continuous, socially embedded media streams, but how habitual short-video use shapes core attentional operations and their neural substrates remains unclear. Here we distinguish active from passive short video usage and examine whether they differentially relate to the alerting, orienting, and executive components of attention and to large-scale resting-state network connectivity. Our results demonstrate that frequent active short video usage predicts reduced alerting efficiency and the functional connectivity between right ventral prefrontal cortex (PFCv) and right posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) mediates this association, attenuating the direct effect and implicating interactions between default mode network (DMN) and control network. While orienting exhibits a modest interaction among different usages in which higher passive usage confers greater orienting only among low-active users, and executive control shows no reliable association. These findings extend resource-control accounts of attention to the short-video context by identifying a specific, right-lateralized coupling between brain networks that links active usage to diminished alerting. Mechanistically, we identify a right-lateralized default-control coupling that mediates the link between active short video usage and reduced alerting, isolating a modifiable resting-state pathway. These results provide actionable metrics for intervention and platform design to mitigate attentional costs in high-exposure users, informing evidence-based guidance for education and policy.
{"title":"The sacrifice of alerting in active short video users: Evidence from executive control and default mode network functional connectivity","authors":"Guanghui Zhai , Yang Feng , Xin Ling , Jiahui Su , Yifan Liu , Yiwei Li , Yunpeng Jiang , Xia Wu","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109291","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109291","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Human attention is a limited resource increasingly taxed by continuous, socially embedded media streams, but how habitual short-video use shapes core attentional operations and their neural substrates remains unclear. Here we distinguish active from passive short video usage and examine whether they differentially relate to the alerting, orienting, and executive components of attention and to large-scale resting-state network connectivity. Our results demonstrate that frequent active short video usage predicts reduced alerting efficiency and the functional connectivity between right ventral prefrontal cortex (PFCv) and right posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) mediates this association, attenuating the direct effect and implicating interactions between default mode network (DMN) and control network. While orienting exhibits a modest interaction among different usages in which higher passive usage confers greater orienting only among low-active users, and executive control shows no reliable association. These findings extend resource-control accounts of attention to the short-video context by identifying a specific, right-lateralized coupling between brain networks that links active usage to diminished alerting. Mechanistically, we identify a right-lateralized default-control coupling that mediates the link between active short video usage and reduced alerting, isolating a modifiable resting-state pathway. These results provide actionable metrics for intervention and platform design to mitigate attentional costs in high-exposure users, informing evidence-based guidance for education and policy.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"219 ","pages":"Article 109291"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145233019","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-01DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109290
Yasmine Bassil , Anisha Kanukolanu , Emma Funderburg , Thackery Brown , Michael R. Borich
During human spatial navigation, individuals transform visuospatial information between egocentric (i.e., first-person, viewer-dependent, body-centered) and allocentric (i.e., third-person, viewer-independent, world-centered) representations for optimal understanding of the surrounding environment. To capture reference frame utilization in a laboratory setting, naturalistic, immersive, open-environment settings in virtual reality are used to mimic real-world navigation. However, few studies have paired navigation through immersive environments with robust, standardized, post-session testing of reference frame utilization. Here, a novel, immersive, city-like, naturalistic virtual reality environment (‘NavCity’) was developed and paired with an accompanying NavCity Allocentric Representation Assessment (NARA) to quantify naturalistic navigation ability and effects of repeated environmental exposure on the formation of allocentric reference frames within a singular experimental session. The NavCity task provides an open-source, standardized, editable, accessible, virtual reality paradigm for assessing naturalistic navigation ability, and the accompanying NARA serves to promote standardization of measures aiming to quantify allocentric knowledge recall. Our central hypothesis is that we will observe within-session improvement in navigation performance after repeated NavCity exposure, which will scale with stronger recall of allocentric representations. Results support this hypothesis and show that within-session NavCity improvements are associated with the assessment of formed allocentric representations tied to the navigated environment. Importantly, this study addresses the need for standardized assessments that measure transformations of first-person, egocentric navigation experiences to third-person, allocentric knowledge using an open-source, naturalistic tool. Immediate next steps are to characterize effects of aging on NavCity and NARA performance to provide understanding of aging-related deficits in allocentric reference frame utilization in older adults.
{"title":"Formation of allocentric representations after exposure to a novel, naturalistic, city-like, virtual reality environment","authors":"Yasmine Bassil , Anisha Kanukolanu , Emma Funderburg , Thackery Brown , Michael R. Borich","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109290","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109290","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>During human spatial navigation, individuals transform visuospatial information between <em>egocentric</em> (i.e., first-person, viewer-dependent, body-centered) and <em>allocentric</em> (i.e., third-person, viewer-independent, world-centered) representations for optimal understanding of the surrounding environment. To capture reference frame utilization in a laboratory setting, naturalistic, immersive, open-environment settings in virtual reality are used to mimic real-world navigation. However, few studies have paired navigation through immersive environments with robust, standardized, post-session testing of reference frame utilization. Here, a novel, immersive, city-like, naturalistic virtual reality environment (‘<em>NavCity’</em>) was developed and paired with an accompanying <em>NavCity</em> Allocentric Representation Assessment (NARA) to quantify naturalistic navigation ability and effects of repeated environmental exposure on the formation of allocentric reference frames within a singular experimental session. The <em>NavCity</em> task provides an open-source, standardized, editable, accessible, virtual reality paradigm for assessing naturalistic navigation ability, and the accompanying NARA serves to promote standardization of measures aiming to quantify allocentric knowledge recall. Our central hypothesis is that we will observe within-session improvement in navigation performance after repeated <em>NavCity</em> exposure, which will scale with stronger recall of allocentric representations. Results support this hypothesis and show that within-session <em>NavCity</em> improvements are associated with the assessment of formed allocentric representations tied to the navigated environment. Importantly, this study addresses the need for standardized assessments that measure transformations of first-person, egocentric navigation experiences to third-person, allocentric knowledge using an open-source, naturalistic tool. Immediate next steps are to characterize effects of aging on <em>NavCity</em> and NARA performance to provide understanding of aging-related deficits in allocentric reference frame utilization in older adults.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"220 ","pages":"Article 109290"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145225859","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-09-30DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109288
Stephan Frederic Dahm , Robert Michael Hardwick
Action-Imagery-Practice describes the repetitive imagination and Action-Observation-Practice the repetitive observation of an action. Both Action-Imagery-Practice and Action-Observation-Practice are assumed to involve similar motor mechanisms as Action-Execution-Practice, resulting in motor learning. To investigate whether these practice styles differ in the acquired representation types, we compared performance of the practice and transfer hand for same, mirrored, and random sequences in pre- and post-tests. All participants practiced a serial reaction time task to auditory stimuli in ten practice sessions. Five separate groups either physically executed the responses (Action-Execution-Practice), imagined the responses (Action-Imagery-Practice), observed keypresses with an animated hand (Action-Observation-Practice), observed animated keys (Observation-Without-Action), or completed a control condition in which they listened to the stimuli (Auditory-Control). Evidence for effector-dependent representations was obtained after Action-Execution-Practice and Action-Imagery-Practice, but not after Action-Observation-Practice and Observation-Without-Action. Although all groups acquired partial sequence knowledge, sequence recognition was more strongly related to kinesthesis than to the tones alone after Action-Execution-Practice and Action-Imagery-Practice. It is concluded that effector-dependent representations can be acquired via Action-Imagery-Practice even though actual feedback is not available. Conceivably, effector-dependent learning might have been provoked by forward models that predict the action consequences in Action-Imagery-Practice, but not in Action-Observation-Practice, where the action consequences were externally presented on screen.
{"title":"Prediction processes in the acquisition of sequence representations","authors":"Stephan Frederic Dahm , Robert Michael Hardwick","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109288","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109288","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Action-Imagery-Practice describes the repetitive imagination and Action-Observation-Practice the repetitive observation of an action. Both Action-Imagery-Practice and Action-Observation-Practice are assumed to involve similar motor mechanisms as Action-Execution-Practice, resulting in motor learning. To investigate whether these practice styles differ in the acquired representation types, we compared performance of the practice and transfer hand for same, mirrored, and random sequences in pre- and post-tests. All participants practiced a serial reaction time task to auditory stimuli in ten practice sessions. Five separate groups either physically executed the responses (Action-Execution-Practice), imagined the responses (Action-Imagery-Practice), observed keypresses with an animated hand (Action-Observation-Practice), observed animated keys (Observation-Without-Action), or completed a control condition in which they listened to the stimuli (Auditory-Control). Evidence for effector-dependent representations was obtained after Action-Execution-Practice and Action-Imagery-Practice, but not after Action-Observation-Practice and Observation-Without-Action. Although all groups acquired partial sequence knowledge, sequence recognition was more strongly related to kinesthesis than to the tones alone after Action-Execution-Practice and Action-Imagery-Practice. It is concluded that effector-dependent representations can be acquired via Action-Imagery-Practice even though actual feedback is not available. Conceivably, effector-dependent learning might have been provoked by forward models that predict the action consequences in Action-Imagery-Practice, but not in Action-Observation-Practice, where the action consequences were externally presented on screen.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"219 ","pages":"Article 109288"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145213246","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-09-26DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109289
David Garnica-Agudelo , Stuart D.W. Smith , Daniel van de Velden , Christina Stier , Knut Brockmann , Sascha Schroeder , Nicole E. Neef , Niels K. Focke
Developmental dyslexia is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by significant difficulties in reading and spelling. Despite lacking routine neuroimaging markers for dyslexia, recent resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) studies have detected atypical functional connectivity (FC) at the sensor-level in children with dyslexia compared to controls. It remains unclear if routine clinical resting-state EEG can be used to detect source-level differences between children with dyslexia and controls. Using retrospective data, we investigated 70 children with dyslexia and 50 typically developing controls. We analyzed 50 s of awake resting-state routine clinical EEG, calculating power and two FC metrics after source-reconstruction. Additionally, correlations between power or FC and IQ, reading, and spelling performance were analyzed. Children with dyslexia had a decrease in theta FC in left temporo-parieto-occipital regions and an increase in alpha FC in left fronto-temporo-parietal regions. Decreased theta FC was observed for right parieto-occipital regions and an increase of alpha FC in right inferior fronto-temporal regions. Furthermore, children with dyslexia demonstrated lower power in delta and theta within the left parieto-occipital regions. No significant correlations were found between the EEG metrics and cognitive performance scores. Nevertheless, our findings contribute evidence of neurophysiological abnormalities at rest in regions relevant for visual attention and orthographic processing in dyslexia, reinforcing the possible role of oscillatory dynamics in reading and spelling development, and suggest the feasibility of source-reconstructed clinical routine EEG data to inform clinicians about oscillatory alterations in children with dyslexia.
{"title":"Source reconstruction of clinical resting-state EEG reveals differences in power and functional connectivity in children with developmental dyslexia","authors":"David Garnica-Agudelo , Stuart D.W. Smith , Daniel van de Velden , Christina Stier , Knut Brockmann , Sascha Schroeder , Nicole E. Neef , Niels K. Focke","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109289","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109289","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Developmental dyslexia is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by significant difficulties in reading and spelling. Despite lacking routine neuroimaging markers for dyslexia, recent resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) studies have detected atypical functional connectivity (FC) at the sensor-level in children with dyslexia compared to controls. It remains unclear if routine clinical resting-state EEG can be used to detect source-level differences between children with dyslexia and controls. Using retrospective data, we investigated 70 children with dyslexia and 50 typically developing controls. We analyzed 50 s of awake resting-state routine clinical EEG, calculating power and two FC metrics after source-reconstruction. Additionally, correlations between power or FC and IQ, reading, and spelling performance were analyzed. Children with dyslexia had a decrease in theta FC in left temporo-parieto-occipital regions and an increase in alpha FC in left fronto-temporo-parietal regions. Decreased theta FC was observed for right parieto-occipital regions and an increase of alpha FC in right inferior fronto-temporal regions. Furthermore, children with dyslexia demonstrated lower power in delta and theta within the left parieto-occipital regions. No significant correlations were found between the EEG metrics and cognitive performance scores. Nevertheless, our findings contribute evidence of neurophysiological abnormalities at rest in regions relevant for visual attention and orthographic processing in dyslexia, reinforcing the possible role of oscillatory dynamics in reading and spelling development, and suggest the feasibility of source-reconstructed clinical routine EEG data to inform clinicians about oscillatory alterations in children with dyslexia.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"219 ","pages":"Article 109289"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145186361","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-09-24DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109287
Hsin-Hui Tsao , Yu-Hui Lo , Afee Chiu , Philip Tseng
Driving is a complex task requiring the integration of multiple cognitive functions and coordinated neural activity. Prior studies suggest that anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) can enhance driving performance, likely due to the DLPFC's role in executive functions. In addition to the DLPFC, the posterior parietal cortex (PPC)—involved in integrating sensory, cognitive, and motor signals—may also contribute to driving behavior. This study investigated the effects of anodal tDCS over the DLPFC and PPC on simulated driving performance. Participants completed a follow-the-lead-car task before and after stimulation, with performance measured using brake reaction time and its standard deviation, standard deviation of lateral position, percentage of speed limit violations, inter-vehicle distance, and the variability (i.e., root mean square) of inter-vehicle distance. We hypothesized that stimulation of either region would improve driving behavior. Results showed that anodal tDCS over the PPC significantly reduced the variability of inter-vehicle distance, suggesting enhanced driving stability. This effect likely reflects the PPC's involvement in spatial attention and motor integration—key processes for maintaining stable following distance. No significant improvements were observed in other performance metrics or following DLPFC stimulation. Overall, this is the first brain stimulation study that connects PPC with driving behavior, and highlights the potential of PPC as a neuromodulatory target to improve driving performance.
{"title":"Anodal tDCS over right posterior parietal cortex reduces inter-vehicle distance variability: A driving simulator study","authors":"Hsin-Hui Tsao , Yu-Hui Lo , Afee Chiu , Philip Tseng","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109287","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109287","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Driving is a complex task requiring the integration of multiple cognitive functions and coordinated neural activity. Prior studies suggest that anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) can enhance driving performance, likely due to the DLPFC's role in executive functions. In addition to the DLPFC, the posterior parietal cortex (PPC)—involved in integrating sensory, cognitive, and motor signals—may also contribute to driving behavior. This study investigated the effects of anodal tDCS over the DLPFC and PPC on simulated driving performance. Participants completed a follow-the-lead-car task before and after stimulation, with performance measured using brake reaction time and its standard deviation, standard deviation of lateral position, percentage of speed limit violations, inter-vehicle distance, and the variability (i.e., root mean square) of inter-vehicle distance. We hypothesized that stimulation of either region would improve driving behavior. Results showed that anodal tDCS over the PPC significantly reduced the variability of inter-vehicle distance, suggesting enhanced driving stability. This effect likely reflects the PPC's involvement in spatial attention and motor integration—key processes for maintaining stable following distance. No significant improvements were observed in other performance metrics or following DLPFC stimulation. Overall, this is the first brain stimulation study that connects PPC with driving behavior, and highlights the potential of PPC as a neuromodulatory target to improve driving performance.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"219 ","pages":"Article 109287"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145176655","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-09-23DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109278
Adam Zeman
Aphantasia, a term coined in 2015, refers to the lack of wakeful visual imagery. Research since then has clarified the nature of this intriguing variation in human experience. I review several unanswered questions which are currently under investigation. First, it appears unlikely that aphantasia is a single entity. If not, what are its subtypes? I consider 5 dimensions of variation that may be relevant. Second, given that people with aphantasia manage so well in everyday life, is it possible that they benefit from ‘unconscious imagery’? Third, what light does aphantasia shed on the functions of imagery? Finally, I emphasise the need to keep an open mind in this young area of research and point to its relevance to the debate surrounding introspection.
{"title":"A decade of aphantasia research – and still going!","authors":"Adam Zeman","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109278","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109278","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Aphantasia, a term coined in 2015, refers to the lack of wakeful visual imagery. Research since then has clarified the nature of this intriguing variation in human experience. I review several unanswered questions which are currently under investigation. First, it appears unlikely that aphantasia is a single entity. If not, what are its subtypes? I consider 5 dimensions of variation that may be relevant. Second, given that people with aphantasia manage so well in everyday life, is it possible that they benefit from ‘unconscious imagery’? Third, what light does aphantasia shed on the functions of imagery? Finally, I emphasise the need to keep an open mind in this young area of research and point to its relevance to the debate surrounding introspection.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"219 ","pages":"Article 109278"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145138020","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mental imagery is a ubiquitous phenomenon for many people. Its absence - aphantasia - has recently attracted increasing scientific interest. Individuals with aphantasia are found to perform as well as typical imagers in most areas. Several studies have proposed that individuals with aphantasia might have a more ‘semantic and abstract’ mode of functioning. The present study aimed to better understand the cognitive profile of individuals with aphantasia by examining their performance regarding semantic and abstract processing. To that end, 45 participants with aphantasia and 51 controls completed questionnaires and behavioural tasks assessing sensory and spatial imagery, verbal strategies, verbal and non-verbal reasoning, and verbal and spatial working memory. Initial group comparisons revealed minimal differences. Rather than limiting our investigation to predefined group comparisons, we then adopted a trans-categorical, data-driven approach to uncover latent cognitive profiles based on task performance and subjective reports. Unsupervised clustering across the full sample revealed three clusters of cognitive profiles centred respectively on visual imagery, spatial imagery and verbal strategies. Crucially, individuals with aphantasia were distributed across two of these profiles. One showed low visual imagery but maintained multisensory imagery and high spatial imagery, while the other displayed low imagery across all sensory modalities and stronger reliance on verbal processing. These findings reveal significant heterogeneity within both aphantasia and control groups, extending beyond differences in visual imagery. They highlight the importance of considering spatial and verbal cognitive dimensions alongside visual phenomenology. By identifying cognitive profiles that transcend traditional imagery classifications, our results support a multidimensional framework for understanding how individual differences in mental representation relate to behaviour.
{"title":"Unsupervised clustering reveals spatial and verbal cognitive profiles in aphantasia and typical imagery","authors":"Maël Delem , Sema Turkben , Eddy Cavalli , Denis Cousineau , Gaën Plancher","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109279","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109279","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Mental imagery is a ubiquitous phenomenon for many people. Its absence - aphantasia - has recently attracted increasing scientific interest. Individuals with aphantasia are found to perform as well as typical imagers in most areas. Several studies have proposed that individuals with aphantasia might have a more ‘semantic and abstract’ mode of functioning. The present study aimed to better understand the cognitive profile of individuals with aphantasia by examining their performance regarding semantic and abstract processing. To that end, 45 participants with aphantasia and 51 controls completed questionnaires and behavioural tasks assessing sensory and spatial imagery, verbal strategies, verbal and non-verbal reasoning, and verbal and spatial working memory. Initial group comparisons revealed minimal differences. Rather than limiting our investigation to predefined group comparisons, we then adopted a trans-categorical, data-driven approach to uncover latent cognitive profiles based on task performance and subjective reports. Unsupervised clustering across the full sample revealed three clusters of cognitive profiles centred respectively on visual imagery, spatial imagery and verbal strategies. Crucially, individuals with aphantasia were distributed across two of these profiles. One showed low visual imagery but maintained multisensory imagery and high spatial imagery, while the other displayed low imagery across all sensory modalities and stronger reliance on verbal processing. These findings reveal significant heterogeneity within both aphantasia and control groups, extending beyond differences in visual imagery. They highlight the importance of considering spatial and verbal cognitive dimensions alongside visual phenomenology. By identifying cognitive profiles that transcend traditional imagery classifications, our results support a multidimensional framework for understanding how individual differences in mental representation relate to behaviour.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"219 ","pages":"Article 109279"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145150106","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-09-22DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109276
Paolo Bartolomeo
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