{"id":50418,"date":"2026-04-14T11:35:30","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T11:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/?p=50418"},"modified":"2026-04-14T11:35:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T11:35:30","slug":"neurons-for-vision-also-help-the-brain-imagine-new-things-npr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/?p=50418","title":{"rendered":"Neurons for vision also help the brain imagine new things : NPR"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n The eye and the mind’s eye: New evidence finds that sight and imagination rely on the same neurons and use the same neural code.
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It’s often called the mind’s eye.<\/p>\n

“I can look at an object in the world around me, but I can also close my eyes and imagine the object,” says Varun Wadia<\/a>, a brain scientist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the California Institute of Technology.<\/p>\n

That sort of visual imagination, Wadia says, is what allows most people to conjure the face of a loved one or navigate to work using a mental map.<\/p>\n

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But its neural underpinnings were a mystery until Wadia and a team reported in the journal Science<\/em><\/a> that imagined and perceived objects appear to activate the same neurons and use the same neural code.<\/p>\n

“This has not been demonstrated before at the neural level,” says Kalanit Grill-Spector<\/a>, a psychology professor at Stanford University’s Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, who was not involved in the research.<\/p>\n