Mind blanking as involuntary manifestation of contentless thinking

Is there a link between the vivid landscapes of visual mental imagery that we construct at will and the enigmatic and often surreal landscapes of our dreams that seem to unfold beyond our control? The realm of human consciousness is vast and the interplay between voluntary and involuntary conscious visualizations feels intricate and boundless. This symposium intersects data from behavioral and neural findings of visual mental imagery, deficits of this ability (congenital and acquired aphantasia) (Bartolomeo), seemingly content-less experience like mind-blanking (Demertzi), and sleeping individuals who can report from within their dreams (Naccache). We will seek an explanatory unification of these axes, namely voluntary, involuntary, conscious and unconscious visualization of images (Spagna). At the core of the symposium, the debate will relate to current theories of visual conscious perception, and discuss the role of long-range connections between frontoparietal and visual regions for voluntary and involuntary conscious visual perception.