Varieties of visual representation: how are we to analyze the concept of mental image?

This paper presents a selective account of imagery research during the 1970s and 80s, whose chief objective was to establish the functional equivalence of imaginal and perceptual representations. More recent attention to imagery by cognitive neuroscience has extended and solidified this idea of functional equivalence, but it has also introduced conceptual complexities by demonstrating that imagery, like perception and object recognition, may consist of distinguishable subsystems whose representational properties become activated in response to the demands of particular cognitive tasks.