Between reality and imagination: in our brain there is a region of the temporal lobe, known as fusiform laplocated behind the times, involved in helping the brain to determine if what we see comes from the outside world, therefore it is real, or is the result of our “fantasy”. The research was led by a research group of the University College London (United Kingdom).
Imagine an apple with the eye of the mind as vividly as possible – explains Nadine Dijkstra, the first author of the work – during the imagination, many of the same brain regions They activate in the same way that you see a real apple. Until recently, it was not clear how the brain distinguished between these real and imagined experiences
How research was conducted
The researchers asked 26 participants to observe simple visual patterns imagining them simultaneously, to look for a not very clear one inside a noisy background on a screen and to indicate whether it was actually present or not.
A real scheme had been presented Only in half of casesbut, of course, the participants were not aware of this, so that their answers were not conditioned. The volunteers also had to imagine an equal or different scheme from what they were looking for and to indicate how vivid their mental images were.
First observation: when the schemes were the same and participants reported that their imagination was very vivid, they were more likely to declare that they had seen a real scheme, even when, in reality, nothing was shown in real, so they were exchanging their mental images for reality.
During all stages of the experiment, their brain activity came monitored through functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI), technology that allowed researchers to identify which areas of the brain showed patterns of activities that helped distinguish reality from the imagination.
What has been shown
Final result: the intensity of the activity in the fusiform lap could predict If people judged an experience like real or imagined. And how particularly intense this activity, people were more likely to indicate that the scheme really existed.
Generally, activation in the fusiform lap is weaker during imagination than perception, which helps the brain to keep the two phases separate. However, this study showed that sometimes, when the participants imagined very vividly, the activation of this brain area was very strong and the participants they exchanged their imagination for reality.
The brain activity in this area of the visual cortex corresponds to the predictions of a computer simulation on how the difference between the experience generated internally and that generated externally – confirms Steve Fleming, which led the study – our results suggest that the brain uses the intensity of sensory signals to distinguish between imagination and reality confirms
And it does not end here, because scientists have also shown that the fusiform lap collaborates with other brain areas To help us distinguish what is real from what is imagined: in particular, the activity in thefront insulacerebral region of the prefrontal cortex (the front of the brain that acts as a control center for tasks such as the decision -making process, the resolution of problems and planning), results increased in line with that in the fusiform lap When the participants said that something was real, even if it was actually imagined.
These areas of the prefrontal cortex have previously been implicated in the metacognitionor the ability to think about our mind – adds Fleming – our results indicate that the same brain areas are also involved in decide what is real
The potential applications of the discovery
The discovery is of immense scope: the researchers, in fact, hope to be able to increase the understanding of the cognitive processes that are altered When someone has difficulty distinguishing what is real from what is not, as in the schizophreniathus leading to progress in the diagnosis and treatment of these conditions.
But not only that: these observations could also inspire the future virtual reality technologiesidentifying how and when imagined experiences become real.
The work, financed by European Research Council and WellComewas published on Neuron.
Sources: University College London / Neuron
