Individual differences in mental imagery are predicted by the intrinsic functional architecture of scene-selective regions

Mental imagery plays a crucial role in several cognitive processes, including navigation. It has been found that cortical regions encoding navigationally-relevant information are also active during mental imagery of navigational scenes. However, it remains unknown whether their activity reflects the individuals’ ability to imagine a scene. Here we used resting state functional connectivity based on functional magnetic resonance imaging and self-reported questionnaires assessing the preference in using mental imagery (over linguistic) representations to examine whether the pattern of reciprocal connections between scene-selective and hippocampal regions reflected individual differences in mental imagery. We found that the functional coupling between the left parahippocampal place area and the left retrosplenial cortex significantly predicted the individual cognitive style, i.e., these regions were more connected in people showing a preference in processing visual information about spatial attributes of the scene versus verbal information. This suggests that the spontaneous brain activity in navigationally relevant regions may account for individual differences in using spatial imagery strategies.