Harnessing Visual Imagery and Oculomotor Behaviour to Understand Prospection
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Nov 16, 2025

Automated Visual Cognitive Tasks for Recording Neural Activity Using a Floor Projection Maze
Published on: February 20, 2014
Federica Conti1, Muireann Irish2
1Institut des Neurosciences de la Timone, Aix-Marseille University, 27 Boulevard Jean Moulin, 13005 Marseille, France; The University of Sydney, Brain and Mind Centre and School of Psychology, 94 Mallett Street, Camperdown, NSW 2050, Australia.
Abstract:
Much of the rich internal world constructed by humans is derived from, and experienced through, visual mental imagery. Despite growing appreciation of visual exploration in guiding episodic memory processes, extant theories of prospection have yet to accommodate the precise role of visual mental imagery in the service of future-oriented thinking. We propose that the construction of future events relies on the assimilation of perceptual details originally experienced, and subsequently reinstantiated, predominantly in the visual domain. Individual differences in the capacity to summon discrete aspects of visual imagery can therefore account for the diversity of content generated by humans during future simulation. Our integrative framework provides a novel testbed to query alterations in future thinking in health and disease.
Related Concept Videos
Depth Perception and Spatial Vision
Prosopagnosia
Visual System
Once through the pupil, the light passes through the lens, a...
Vision
Parallel Processing
Gestalt Principles of Perception

