Deana Vitrano has compared perception and imagination at the visual cortex in a recent article. She presented the findings in her Dickinson College Honors Thesis, Paper 12, in 2012. Her work is consistent with articles that have been presented in the last decade by a number of neuroscientists.
Her study found that imagined patterns and seen patterns produced similar waveforms in 30 college students. Her findings supported “the claim that the visual cortex is activated in a similar manner during both imagination and perception.” That perception and visual mental imagery share common processes in the visual cortex was strengthened by the application of fMRI and PET scans. She recognized the importance of analyzing imagined stimuli that had not been seen before, so that imagined images would not be drawn from memory but were described verbally to the study subject. “The same neural substrates are involved in both imagination and perception.”
Evoked potential waveforms that were recorded were reflective of images that were both perceived and imagined in the “Mind’s Eye.” As I have shared in previous blogs, including “Waves in Our Brains,” Parts 1-3, it can be inferred as the best explanation that the immaterial cognitive mind can generate waveforms that are transmitted through the visual cortex as neural codes that can be interpreted as the images imagined as well as perceived. Her study is consistent with the premise of dualist interaction between the immaterial mind and the material components of the brain’s synaptic networks. That the human mind has been created in the imago Dei infers in a compelling manner that the Mind of God can in fact commune with the mind of Man via the indwelling Holy Spirit, a process supported by the brain’s synaptic networks.