Historically, mental imagery has been defined as an experiential state—as something necessarily conscious. But most behavioural or neuroimaging experiments on mental imagery—including the most famous ones—do not actually take the conscious experience of the subject into consideration. Further, recent research highlights that there are very few behavioural or neural differences between conscious and unconscious mental imagery. I argue that treating mental imagery as not necessarily conscious (as potentially unconscious) would bring much needed explanatory unification to mental imagery research. It would also help us to reassess some of the recent aphantasia findings inasmuch as at least some subjects with aphantasia would be best described as having unconscious mental imagery.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘Offline perception: voluntary and spontaneous perceptual experiences without matching external stimulation’.

从历史上看，心理意象被定义为一种体验状态——某种必然有意识的东西。但大多数关于心理意象的行为或神经成像实验——包括最著名的那些——实际上并没有考虑到主体的意识体验。此外，最近的研究强调，有意识和无意识的心理意象之间几乎没有行为或神经差异。我认为，将心理意象视为不一定是有意识的（可能是无意识的）会给心理意象研究带来急需的解释统一。这也将有助于我们重新评估最近的一些 aphantasia 发现，因为至少一些患有 aphantasia 的受试者最好被描述为具有无意识的心理意象。

这篇文章是主题问题“离线感知：没有匹配外部刺激的自愿和自发的感知体验”的一部分。