PhD Conferral drs. Thomas C. Emmerling

“Imaging imagery: an investigation of visual cognition using high-resolution fMRI”

“Imaging imagery: an investigation of visual cognition using high-resolution fMRI”

Key words: visual mental imagery, fMRI

Every day people use visual mental imagery for creativity and solving problems. The research focused on the fine-grained neural representation of visual stimuli during perception as well as imagery using ultra-high spatial resolution fMRI at 7 Tesla. The findings showed overlapping functional maps in the human middle temporal area (hMT) for binocular disparity as well as visual motion direction. In several brain areas across the visual system the direction of imagined visual motion could be decoded based on fMRI data. Finally, the findings showed the possibility to reconstruct and decode an imagined letter from brain activity in the visual system.