An attention-based neural model of subjective imagery and aphantasia

Subjective imagery refers to one’s quasi-perceptual experience in the absence of direct external input. Yet around 4% of individuals with “aphantasia” report an inability to voluntarily generate such experiences. This phenomenon provides a natural experiment that challenges current theories of imagery, which typically assume that reactivation of the visual cortex in imagery generation is sufficient for imagery experience. In fact, neuroimaging evidence shows that aphantasic individuals can reactivate visual cortex normally during imagery tasks, indicating that additional, as-yet-unspecified, processes are required for subjective experience to emerge. Here, I propose an attention-based model of subjective imagery with two aims: (i) to outline a hierarchical processing, in which generation provides initial sensory reactivations, integration binds these features into coherent perceptual-like content, and amplification enhances them for conscious access, capturing both voluntary and spontaneous imagery; and (ii) to specify a putative neural implementation in a fronto-parietal-fusiform network shaped by two interacting attention systems. Aphantasia primarily reflects deficits in top-down attentional control, with preserved generation but impaired integration and amplification of internal representations, linked to altered interactions between frontoparietal control networks and the fusiform gyrus.Overall, this model reframes imagery as an active, constructive process shaped by the dynamic interplay of attention, sensory, and memory networks, rather than a passive reactivation of memory traces. Thus, this paper presents a testable mechanistic account of the neural substrates of subjective imagery and aphantasia, motivating future research and illuminating the neural basis of conscious experience.