The ability to conjure pictures in the mind’s eye enables us to remember the past and imagine the future. It also allows us to plan, navigate and create works of art. In a study published April 9 in Science, researchers report that imagining an object reactivates some of the same neurons involved in seeing it in the first place, providing new insight into how mental imagery is produced in the brain.
Previous research had hinted that the neurons involved in perceiving and imagining images overlapped. These studies used various methods, such as asking participants to view and then imagine pictures while lying in a functional MRI scanner, to show