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Stephen Michael Kosslyn, PhD (1948 - ) is an American Cognitive Psychologist and professor at Stanford University. He specializes in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. He works largely on the mechanisms of mental imagery. Specifically, Kosslyn’s major contribution to cognitive psychology is the theory which states that image construction in the mind is a result of several small processes. He has authored close to 300 journal articles, and nearly 50 chapters and/or full books.

Education
Not much is known of Kosslyn’s childhood. Kosslyn received his B.A. in 1970 from UCLA, and subsequently achieved his PhD from Stanford in 1974 under advisor Gordon Bower. Even as an undergrad he was involved in psychological research; working under John Seward, he studied animal models of visual discrimination. He published a paper on form and shape perception in mental imagery in Perception and Psychophysics during his graduate work. His doctoral dissertation focussed on the construction of visual images, and much of his consequent work has been on the same topic. In the earliest years of Kosslyn’s work, he focussed on the visual memory of children and compared them to adults. He also looked at internal representations from text to mental picture.

Time at Harvard (1977 – 1981)
Kosslyn was hired as an associate professor at Harvard University in 1977. During his time there, Kosslyn began to expand his research from simple mental imagery to more complex ideas. Kosslyn began to analyse three-dimensional space in mental images and measure the visual angle of the mind’s eye. Kosslyn created his four pronged theory of mental imagery in 1979. The theory states that first, there are images that are generated. Second, the images are analyzed. Third, the mental picture undergoes maintenance. Fourth, the image transforms. This theory is one that Kosslyn would build upon throughout the course of his career, and one that would influence many future cognitive psychologists attempting to understand the mechanisms of mental imagery.

Time at Brandeis University and Johns Hopkins (1981 – 1983)
Kosslyn left Harvard after 1981, and had a brief research hiatus while working as an assistant professor, first at Brandeis University and then, a year later, as visiting professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins University.

Return to Harvard (1983 – 2010)
Kosslyn returned to Harvard University as a psychology professor. During his 27-year career at Harvard University, Kosslyn has achieved many honours. He was named the John Lindsley Professor of Psychology in 2001, a title honouring psychologist and philosopher William James. Kosslyn was declared the chair of the psychology department in 2005. Three years later, he was named the Dean of Social Science.

In 1989, Kosslyn Co-founded the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

Kosslyn’s research during his time at Harvard dealt with visual imagery, but ranged from the psychological mechanisms used to produce mental imagery, imaging techniques of the brain, anatomical and physiological mechanisms of the brain as they relate to mental imagery, memory, and effective presentation of information, among others.

In the early years of his research, Kosslyn looked at mathematical and graphical representations of the visual memory. He looked at the use of coordinate systems in memory representation of three dimensional states. Kosslyn also looked at semantic memory – that is, he conducted studies that assisted him in understanding the way that humans name items that they see. In 1984, Kosslyn published a paper entitled “Individual differences in visual imagery: A Computational analysis”. This marked his shift into a cognitive psychologist. Kosslyn was the first to seriously look at computational analysis models among his colleagues. After this first paper, Kosslyn followed with many computational analyses of the brain and its neuroanatomical mechanisms for visual imagery and visual memory over the next few years. First, he looked at the individual differences in creating mental pictures. Consequently, he looked at computational models of image creation in split brain patients and in patients with different sized hemispheres. As well, Kosslyn also looked at computational models of creation of imagery in the cerebral hemispheres, parietal lobe, and cortical visual systems of patients. In the 90s, Kosslyn began to analyse perceptual spatial relationships though computational models. Kosslyn’s research has had a large influence on Harvard’s psychology department, as he spearheaded the computational model representation of psychological phenomena. Though it was in his own research, he has since opened the idea up to other researchers.

In the mid-eighties, Kosslyn also began to look at participants who are influenced by demand characteristics. He found that participants in image scanning experiments were not answering questions by succumbing to demand characteristics. He justified their data and suggested that more visual scan tests should be done as a result.

Kosslyn has also looked at many of the mechanisms that are associated with sight and visual perception. In 1988, Kosslyn published a paper relating the cerebral hemispheres to mental visual images. His overall conclusion suggested that though the right or left side of the brain have more impact on certain processes, they both work together to create mental images. Much of Kosslyn’s work in the years 1988 and 1989 was an extended investigation of hemisphere specialization; specifically, which hemispheres are responsible for each of the different steps of visual mental image creation. He continued this work throughout his career; we see papers about hemispheric divisions reappear in the mid- to late nineties.

In addition to this, Kosslyn also investigated vision and conducted many investigations of vision and its neuronal mechanisms. In 1990 alone, he authored or coauthored four papers on the matter. Through his time at Harvard, he has published at least 30 papers regarding vision and different parts of the brain. He has looked at individual difference designs to truly understand where the differences in the task and process lie.

Another area of research that Kosslyn was a part of was the investigation of mental image creation deficits being comorbid with dyslexia and other language disorders, as well as other learning disabilities. He also looked at obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and the effects having it or Major Depressive Disorder and anorexia nervosa has on one’s visual reality  .Kosslyn also looked at the effect of emotions on image perception, particularly fear. Further, he investigated the visual processing of migraine patients and psychotic patients as well. He has, of course, investigated visual disorders as well, specifically on prosopagnosia, and agnosia. Not all disorders are negative in association to visual processing, Kosslyn discovered. Imagery is enhanced in deaf patients and ASL signers who can hear. Kosslyn has also looked at imaging deficits in patients with hypochondria. Kosslyn has recently investigated patients who have Post traumatic stress disorder and the effects of reflecting back on the source of trauma and using mental imagery for both.

Kosslyn also began looking at the applications of his visual spatial research. He began in 1989 with a paper called “Understanding charts and graphs”. Through the next two decades, Kosslyn wrote several papers, chapters, and books about applications of cognitive psychology. He has written a book about effective presentations, and graphic design, and what effect a person’s work can have on the viewer of their work (See Bibliography, Below). These applications of cognitive science can be used in academia and business; specifically, teaching and marketing.

Kosslyn’s research features many imaging techniques – he has investigated the brain and his theories of visual imagery through fMRI, MRI, and PET scans. Kosslyn was particularly interested in these studies using the aforementioned image techniques through the mid-nineties into the mid-2000s. In 1998, Kosslyn began to analyse aging in relation to visual processing more intensively, and found that it was harder for the elderly to call images to attention in their mind’s eye. In 1999, he also investigated the scope of visual attention in aging participants.

Kosslyn also investigated how people orient images in space. Beginning with a paper called “Motor processes in mental rotation,” Kosslyn proceeded to work with several other psychologists to look at human’s spatial relations. He assisted in creating simulation models, investigated participants with PET scans, and then investigated “deficits in spatial indexing [and their] contribut[ion] to simultanagnosia”.

Hypnosis and hypnotic visual illusions are another thing investigated by Kosslyn. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Kosslyn investigated the various ways that hypnotic suggestion affect a person’s mental image centres; he could that hypnotic illusions change colour processing in the human brain; further, he investigated how imagery affects a person’s hypnotisability.

Kosslyn has also worked with other researchers and students on studies about the creation of mental imagery, the creation of the third dimension in mental imagery, teaching pigeons abstract relational rules, among others. He has also looked at patients with congenital blindness and their other enhanced sensory experiences. He also has research interests outside of visual imagery; he has also investigated the biological implications of the individual members in a group setting, and the effects of a group setting on stress and immune response.

In 1992, Kosslyn wrote a paper called “Is cognitive neuropsychology plausible? The perils of sitting on a one-legged stool.” The paper called to question the field itself, and things that should and should not belong in the field. He also calls to question some weak research and pseudo science in that paper. Another paper in 1993, “A neuroscience of behaviour or cognitivistic view of neuroscience”, once again attempts to define the field. Kosslyn has also published many formal critiques of other researcher’s works, and further, has also had a heavy hand in the direction of mental imagery research, specifically.

Return to Stanford (2011 – Present)
Kosslyn returned to his Alma Mater, Stanford University, to take on the position of director at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences. Kosslyn has been an advisor for many students who are carrying on work about visual mental imagery from many of his own formerly investigated theories, and some new ones as well. As new techniques are discovered, visual imagery research will move forward with all other psychological disciplines.