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Author Spotlight: Enhancing Neurorehabilitation Through EEG, Motor Imagery, and Virtual Reality
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Gaze patterns during visual mental imagery reflect part-based generation.

Enea J Weber1, Fred W Mast2

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Bern, 3012, Bern, Switzerland. enea.weber@unibe.ch.

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|January 13, 2026
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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Eye movements during visual mental imagery mirror part-based perception, not holistic viewing. This suggests mental images are generated piece by piece, regardless of initial visual encoding.

Keywords:
Eye-trackingGaze-contingent windowMental imagery

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Neuroscience
  • Visual Perception

Background:

  • Eye movements during visual mental imagery often resemble those made during prior perception.
  • Understanding the mechanisms of mental image generation is crucial for cognitive science.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if eye movements during mental imagery reflect a part-by-part generation process.
  • To compare gaze patterns during mental imagery with part-based and holistic viewing conditions.

Main Methods:

  • Two experiments were conducted comparing gaze patterns during mental imagery.
  • Gaze-contingent window (GCW) simulated part-based viewing; artificial scotoma (AS) simulated holistic viewing.
  • Fixation scanpaths and refixation patterns were analyzed using MultiMatch and recurrence quantification analysis.

Main Results:

  • Eye movements during mental imagery largely mirrored gaze patterns during GCW (part-based) viewing.
  • This resemblance persisted regardless of how pictures were initially encoded (freely, GCW, or AS).
  • Gaze patterns during mental imagery systematically resembled part-based perception.

Conclusions:

  • Eye movements during visual mental imagery reflect a part-by-part generation process.
  • This part-by-part generation is independent of the initial perceptual encoding strategy.
  • The findings provide direct evidence for a constructive, sequential process in mental imagery.