Retinal eccentricity effects on reaction time to imagined stimuli

To cast light on the possible neural substrate of visual imagery we tested normal participants and one hemianopic patient on simple reaction time (RT) to real and imagined visual stimuli. In one experiment participants were to detect as quickly as possible a luminous square presented at one out of two different retinal eccentricities. A well known effect with visual stimuli is that RT is slower for peripheral versus central stimuli. We found that imagined stimuli showed an eccentricity effect similar to that obtained with real stimuli. However, this was not the case in a patient with a hemianopic visual field loss (quadrantanopia) as a result of damage to the optic radiation. Even though the patient showed no difficulty in imaging stimuli in the affected hemifield she did not show an eccentricity effect as was the case in her intact side. In a second experiment, normal participants showed faster RT to stimuli of larger size with either real or imagined stimuli. Overall, these results show that visual perception and imagination share a similar visuotopic organisation that is disrupted following deafferentation of the visual cortex.