ABSTRACT
The chapter reviews the key issues in music-related mental imagery research by focusing on the definitions, and methods for capturing imagery, and offers theoretical perspective of embodied cognition to bind multiple domains of interest within the topic area. The theoretical challenges involved in music-related mental imagery are the existence of a large body of theoretical proposals about mental imagery and memory representations. In music, questions of what and when are particularly pertinent as mental imagery can be regarded as auditory, visual, motor, or kinaesthetic imagery. The empirical challenges of music-related mental imagery relate to reliable capture of imagery in its all forms. The non-verbal and indirect measures are given special attention in the chapter due to their capacity to avoid the shortcomings of the self-reports. Attention is also drawn to how culture shapes many or most forms of mental imagery. The chapter reflects on what are the requirements of the research instruments that will be able to capture music-related mental imagery in a way that is reliable, efficient, and retains culturally relevant aspects of imagery and individual variability.
