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The pupillary light response as a physiological index of aphantasia, sensory and phenomenological imagery strength.

ABSTRACT: The pupillary light response is an important automatic physiological response which optimizes light reaching the retina. Recent work has shown that the pupil also adjusts in response to illusory brightness and a range of cognitive functions, however, it remains unclear what exactly drives these endogenous changes. Here, we show that the imagery pupillary light response correlates with objective measures of sensory imagery strength. Further, the trial-by-trial phenomenological vividness of visual imagery is tracked by the imagery pupillary light response. We also demonstrated that a group of individuals without visual imagery (aphantasia) do not show any significant evidence of an imagery pupillary light response, however they do show perceptual pupil light responses and pupil dilation with larger cognitive load. Our results provide evidence that the pupillary light response indexes the sensory strength of visual imagery. This work also provides the first physiological validation of aphantasia.

SUBMITTER: Kay L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9018072 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The pupillary light response as a physiological index of aphantasia, sensory and phenomenological imagery strength.

Kay Lachlan L Keogh Rebecca R Andrillon Thomas T Pearson Joel J

eLife 20220331

The pupillary light response is an important automatic physiological response which optimizes light reaching the retina. Recent work has shown that the pupil also adjusts in response to illusory brightness and a range of cognitive functions, however, it remains unclear what exactly drives these endogenous changes. Here, we show that the imagery pupillary light response correlates with objective measures of sensory imagery strength. Further, the trial-by-trial phenomenological vividness of visual ...[more]

PMID: 35356890

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Project description:Aphantasia-a condition wherein individuals have a reduced or absent construction of voluntary visual imagery-is diagnosed using either the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) or self-identification. However, a significant discrepancy exists between the proportions of aphantasia in the populations assessed using these two criteria. It is unclear why the reported proportions differ excessively and what percentage of people cannot form visual imagery. We investigated the replicability of the proportion of people with aphantasia using both criteria in the same population of participants. Therefore, we explored the potential causes of the discrepancy and characteristics of putative aphantasia in terms of multisensory imagery, cognitive style, and face recognition ability. First, we conducted an online sampling study (Study 1: N = 2,871) using the VVIQ, self-identification of a reduction in visual imagery, Questionnaire upon Mental Imagery (QMI), and Verbalizer-Visualizer Questionnaire (VVQ). We found that 3.7 and 12.1% fulfilled the VVIQ and self-identification criteria, respectively, roughly replicating the proportions reported in previous studies. The self-identification criterion-but not the VVIQ criterion-contains items related to face recognition; hence, we suspected that face recognition ability was factor contributing to this discrepancy and conducted another online sampling study (Study 2: N = 774). We found a significant correlation between VVIQ and face recognition ability in the control group with self-identification, but not in the group defined by low VVIQ (VVIQ ≤32). As the participants in the control group with self-identification tended to exhibit moderately high VVIQ scores but low face recognition ability, we reason that the discrepancy can be partially explained by the contamination of individual differences in face recognition ability. Additional analyses of Study 1 revealed that the aphantasia group included participants who lacked all types of sensory imagery or only visual imagery in multisensory imagery and exhibited a non-specific cognitive style. This study indicates that the VVIQ alone may be insufficient to diagnose individuals who report an inability to form visual imagery. Furthermore, we highlight the importance of multiple assessments-along with the VVIQ-to better understand the diversity of imagery in aphantasia.

Dataset Information

The pupillary light response as a physiological index of aphantasia, sensory and phenomenological imagery strength.

Publications

The pupillary light response as a physiological index of aphantasia, sensory and phenomenological imagery strength.

Similar Datasets

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