Abstract: The main aim of my talk is to connect mental time travel with vivid visual imagery and explain the neural networks of the movies of our minds. I will first focus on the link between mental time travel and vivid visual imagery. In the second part, I will concentrate in more depth on the neural networks that support both episodic autobiographical memory and visual-perceptual scene processing. I will highlight recent work using functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at standard 3 Tesla MRI scanners and ultrahigh-field 7 Tesla MRI scanners in healthy people and people with Aphantasia. Towards the end, I will present a novel model of the neural construction of imagery-rich mental events.
BIO: As a trained psychiatrist and neuropsychologist at the Memory Clinic, University Hospital Bonn, my research aims to understand the intricate relationship between episodic autobiographical memory (AM) and visual-perceptual scene imagery, as well as the neural networks underlying these complex cognitive functions.
My research program follows my scientific training with Profs. Mary Pat McAndrews and Morris Moscovitch at the University of Toronto and Prof. Eleanor Maguire at University College London. In Toronto, I illustrated that the hippocampus interacts heavily with the visual-perceptual cortices during vivid AM elaboration (McCormick et al, 2015), and that hippocampal-neocortical connectivity is altered in people with temporal lobe epilepsy (McCormick et al., 2013, 170 citations). In London, my experiments contributed to the finding that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) initiates hippocampal scene processing underlying AM and other cognitive functions, including mind-wandering (McCormick et al, 2018, 166 citations), and decision-making.
Since my time in Bonn, I established my own research group “Memory and Imagination”. My group conducts memory research at a cutting-edge level, employing ultrahigh-resolution 7TfMRI in healthy subjects and in people with various clinical conditions that are associated with memory/imagery deficits, among them, Neurodegenerative Dementias, Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, Aphantasia, and Blindness. We recently employed submillimeter 7TfMRI to illustrate specific hippocampal subfield contributions and their neocortical interactions during AM. Additionally, we showed that AM deficits in Aphantasia are associated with altered connectivity between hippocampus and visual-perceptual cortices.
In sum, my research has and continues to illuminate the contributions and connectivity between the vmPFC, hippocampus and visual-perceptual cortices supporting AM and visual-perceptual imagery. My work has played an important role in the development of models of hippocampal-neocortical interactions in healthy people and in people with neurological/psychiatric disorders (Robin and Moscovitch, 2017, Monk et al. 2021).