{"id":15149552,"date":"2026-06-09T10:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T14:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/imagination-is-not-just-replaying-what-weve-seen-and-heard\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T11:10:03","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T15:10:03","slug":"imagination-is-not-just-replaying-what-weve-seen-and-heard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/imagination-is-not-just-replaying-what-weve-seen-and-heard\/","title":{"rendered":"Imagination is not just replaying what we\u2019ve seen and heard"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you imagine a waterfall, what comes to mind? Maybe a misty cascade into a blue pool surrounded by trees. Perhaps the roar of water splashing down, as well. It\u2019s a big mystery how brain activity<\/a> differs when imagining a waterfall versus seeing or hearing one in real life. Brain scans now suggest some activity when you imagine something is similar to what happens when you see or hear the real thing.<\/p>\n

But that overlap did not<\/em> appear in brain areas that deal with single senses. Instead, it showed up in high-level brain networks<\/a>. These are ones that handle inputs from multiple types of senses.<\/p>\n

Researchers shared these findings March 31 in Neuron<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"a
Imagining a scene such as this one activates various areas of the brain, a new study shows. <\/span>sara_winter\/iStock\/Getty Images Plus<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Neuroscientist Rodrigo Braga led the research. \u201cWhen I was a teenager,\u201d he says, \u201cI remember the first time realizing that there\u2019s like a voice I can hear in my head.\u201d This \u201cinternal monologue\u201d narrates one\u2019s own thoughts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s really strange,\u201d Braga recalls thinking. \u201cWhy is it that we experience those thoughts and sensations almost as if we’re perceiving them?\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s spent years trying to answer that question. He now works at Northwestern University\u2019s Feinberg School of Medicine. It\u2019s in Chicago, Ill. In a new study, his team asked eight people to imagine scenes, faces, someone else speaking, their own internal monologues and other sounds. All the while, an MRI<\/a> machine scanned their brains.<\/p>\n

Having hours of MRI data on all eight people allowed the team to create individualized brain maps for each. These showed how each person\u2019s brain activity changed during imagination.<\/p>\n

The imagination prompts that people got were open-ended. One was: \u201cImagine a castle on a hill.\u201d Another: \u201cImagine a rock song playing on the radio.\u201d After each prompt, the scientists asked people what they saw and heard in their heads. The questions probed how vivid each imagined experience had been \u2014 how clear and realistic it felt.<\/p>\n

After completing the brain scans, Braga\u2019s team asked follow-up questions. These explored what made some mental images more vivid than others.<\/p>\n

Under the hood of imagination<\/h2>\n

The researchers grouped their data into two buckets. In one, they put the data on imagined locations and events. In the other, they grouped the data on imagined speech and language.<\/p>\n