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From Imagining to Seeing: The influence of visual mental imagery of people and buildings on perception during binocular rivalry

DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2026.03.001
Tomastikova, J., & Silson, E. H. (2026). From imagining to seeing: the influence of visual mental imagery of people and buildings on perception during binocular rivalry. Cortex. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2026.03.001

Abstract

Mental imagery and visual perception can both give rise to vivid visual experiences, yet the extent to which they can functionally influence each other remains an open question. Previous research has shown that imagining a stimulus before viewing a rivalrous display can bias perception towards the imagined content. However, this effect has been demonstrated primarily with simple, low-level stimuli such as oriented gratings. Here, we investigated whether imagery of more complex representations—people and buildings—can influence perception, using the binocular rivalry paradigm. Participants in our study imagined either a personally familiar person or personally familiar building before viewing a rivalrous face–house stimulus. We measured their perceptual dominance and imagery vividness on each trial. Their overall imagery ability was assessed using the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ). We found that participants were significantly more likely to perceive the imagined stimulus; however, this priming effect was driven by person imagery. Greater vividness of person imagery on each trial significantly increased dominance of the face stimulus, but this effect did not extend to building imagery and the house stimulus. Furthermore, the VVIQ did not predict individual differences in priming magnitude. These results extend previous work by showing that mental imagery can influence perception beyond simple stimuli, but that this functional link is shaped by stimulus-specific features. Our findings highlight the need for future research to examine the conditions under which imagining more complex representations affects seeing.

Authors

  • Jana Tomastikova1
  • Edward H. Silson1

What This Study Is About

Researchers wanted to know if the "mind’s eye"—the ability to picture things in your head—can actually change what you see in the real world. Specifically, they tested whether imagining complex things like a friend’s face or a familiar building could "prime" the brain to see those objects more easily.

How They Studied It

The team worked with 51 participants who wore 3D-style red and green glasses. Using a trick called binocular rivalry, researchers showed a red house to one eye and a green face to the other. Because the brain can’t merge these two different images, it usually flips back and forth between seeing the house and the face.
Before looking at the images, participants spent about 10 seconds imagining a person or a building they knew well. The researchers then checked if what the person was imagining "won" the battle and became the first thing they saw.

What They Found

Imagining a person acted like a "cheat code" for the brain. When participants imagined a familiar face, they were significantly more likely to see the face stimulus (about 63% of the time). However, imagining a building didn't have the same effect—it was basically a coin flip.
The researchers also found that how vivid a specific image felt *in that moment* was the best predictor of whether it would influence their vision. Interestingly, a person's general score on the VVIQ (a questionnaire used to measure imagery strength) didn't predict how much they were influenced.

What This Might Mean

This suggests that our imagination and our actual vision use some of the same "wiring" in the brain. It seems easier for our thoughts to "leak" into our sight when we think about faces compared to buildings.
While this study only included two people with aphantasia (the inability to create mental images), those individuals didn't show the same strong "priming" effect. This suggests that without a mind's eye, the brain might process these visual battles differently, but we need much larger studies with more aphantasic participants to be certain.

One Interesting Detail

The "Face Advantage": The researchers think faces are so special to the human brain that we are "extra-tuned" to them. Because faces all have a similar structure (two eyes, a nose, a mouth), they might be easier for the imagination to "pre-load" into our vision than buildings, which come in all sorts of weird shapes and sizes!
This summary was generated by AI and may contain errors. Always refer to the original paper for accuracy.