Human perception is imagination | Nadine Dijkstra

About this episode

Nadine Dijkstra discusses how the brain differentiates between mental images and actual perception.

Nadine Dijkstra is a Principal Investigator at the Institute of Neurology at UCL. Her research in Imaging Neuroscience explores how the brain generates mental images and differentiates them from actual perception. Utilizing neuroimaging, psychophysics, machine learning, and computational modeling, Dijkstra addresses fundamental questions about the overlap between perception and imagery. Recently, Dijkstra has been leading the Imagine Reality Lab at UCL's Department of Imaging Neuroscience, focusing on the intersection of imagination and reality. Dijkstra's 2023 paper in Nature Communications showed the brain evaluates images against a 'reality threshold' to distinguish between images and perception. Her work also investigates how changes in these neural processes could impact mental health. Check out our new series, Ideas for Our Time: https://youtu.be/nYS4FylZJ2Q Don't hesitate to email us at podcast@iai.tv with your thoughts or questions on the episode! To witness such debates live buy tickets for our upcoming festival: https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/ And visit our website for many more articles, videos, and podcasts like this one: https://iai.tv/ You can find…

People in this episode

Host: IAI

Guest: Nadine Dijkstra

Topics covered

• imagination
• perception
• neuroscience
• mental health
• neuroimaging
• machine learning

Keywords

• human perception
• imagination
• neuroscience
• mental images
• reality threshold
• mental health
• neuroimaging

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Institute of Neurology at UCL, UCL, Imagine Reality Lab, Nature Communications

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