A neural model of conscious mental imagery and aphantasia

Mental 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 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. In this theory paper, I propose an attention-based model of conscious imagery (“the attention model”), in which generation provides initial sensory reactivations, integration binds visual features into coherent perceptual-like content, and amplification enhances them for conscious access. This hierarchical processing of conscious imagery appears to be supported by a fronto-parietal-fusiform network shaped by two interacting attention systems. Aphantasia primarily reflects deficits in top-down modulation, with preserved generation but impaired integration and amplification of internal representations, linked to altered interactions between frontoparietal attention 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 sensory representation. It offers a testable neuromechanistic account bridging research on imagery and consciousness, motivating future research on unconscious and conscious processing of internal representations.