Mario Villena-González
Laboratorio de Neurodinámica Básica y Aplicada, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile
(cc) Violeta Kallens y Mario Villena.
When our attention is internally oriented toward self-generated thoughts, brain processing to external stimuli becomes attenuated. Studies have shown that visual imagery and auditory/verbal thoughts activate brain regions involved in visual or auditory perception, respectively. However, the potential effects that different mental contents might have on attentional processing were unknown. A recent study from our laboratory showed that visual imagery decreases visual processing to external stimuli to a greater extent than auditory/verbal thoughts. These results demonstrate that different kinds of thoughts differentially affect our attentional and neural processing of external stimuli.
