Mental imagery is the human brain capacity to create mental images of past, present, future or invented events or action. Mental imagery engages similar neural networks as does the perception of the corresponding stimuli or execution of the corresponding movement and emerging protocols are taking advantage of this characteristic to propose clinical remediation relying on mental imagery training or mental imagery-based neurofeedback, a brain-computer interface allowing to learn to voluntarily control cortical oscillations. However current knowledge of the cerebral basis of mental imagery mainly relies on problem-solving tasks and mental imagery versus physical perception comparisons. While there seems to be a relationship between the subjective experience of imagery during mental imagery training and subsequent functional enhancement, and while scientific research on mental imagery strongly relies on first-person report of imagery experience, most of the experimental work on mental imagery so far has largely ignored the imagery experience itself.
Yet, the need for integrative studies “that bridge between low-level (e.g. neuronal, physiological) and high-level (e.g. belief, intention, identity) descriptions” and “go beyond the classical perception-action loop” to also tackle issues such as experience is clearly identified in the EU research priorities. Indeed, a better understanding of the neural correlates of mental imagery in relation to the experience felt by the subject could enhance the quality and efficacy of mental imagery-based clinical protocols and considering mental imagery as a human experience instead of a mental representation only would foster a better understanding of the nature of MI and its relation to cognition and the brain.
Electroencephalographic (EEG) activity reflects the real-time occurrence of brain events and, as such, is well suited for the study of the neural correlates of transient cognitive events such as mental images. A classical approach in EEG studies of mental imagery is to compute the average neural response elicited by a mental image (event-related potentials, ERPs). However, the oscillatory dynamic of the brain processes is lost both in studies using ERPs and in the ones using the low-time resolution functional magnetic resonnance imaging (fMRI) technique. As a result, the literature lacks of a clear picture of the brain dynamics underlying mental imagery.
The first objective of NeuPheMI is thus to study the dynamic of the brain activity during mental imagery. To do so, electroencephalography (EEG) is a technique of choice, as it has a very high temporal resolution.
A second objective is to study the phenomenological experience that accompanies the making of visual mental images. To do so we decided to employ micro-phenomenology, a novel scientific discipline allowing to explore lived experience very finely. Micro-phenomenology relies on non-inducive guided interviews, enabling the interviewee to become aware of her or his subjective experience and to describe it with great precision.
