The surprisingly simple “dial” in the brain can help him distinguish the imagination of reality

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The surprisingly simple “dial” in the brain can help him distinguish the imagination of reality

The imagination is based on an ability to differentiate what is real and what is not – and now, scientists have revealed potential brain mechanisms that make this distinction possible. They, according to them, can be significant in conditions such as schizophrenia, which can affect the perception of people of reality.

An article published on June 5 in the journal Neuron explored these mechanisms. Scientists know previous research that a specific brain region – Fusiform gyrusA large crest that crosses two brain lobes – is active both when you see something in reality and when you Imagine somethingfirst author of the study Nadine DijkstraA neuroscientist at the University College in London, told Live Science.

“But what we found is that the activity levels in this region predicted whether you think something is real or not, whether you saw it or imagine,” she explained.

The fusiform gyrus is involved in high -level visual treatment, such as identifying the objects and faces of people of their appearance. The study suggests that during the imagination, the signal force is lower compared to perception; This difference in signal strength allows the brain to distinguish the two. In other words, if the activity crosses a certain threshold, the brain interprets it as reality.

To achieve this conclusion, scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (IRM), a technique that follows blood flow as an indirect brain activity. In a series of experiences, 26 participants were invited to search for diagonal lines on a screen with a dynamic noise – such as static television – and indicate whether the lines were present. Half of the time, the lines were displayed on the screen; The other half of the time, they were not.

At the same time, the participants were invited to imagine lines that worked in the same direction as the real lines or that were perpendicular, according to the Tour. They also reported how lively the images they were.

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“The trick was that sometimes the participants imagined the same lines [that they saw on-screen]And sometimes they imagined different lines, “said Dijkstra.” What we found was that when they imagined the same lines, they said more often than they saw real lines, even when nothing was there. “”

In other words, imagining the visual you expected to see can encourage the brain to think that it is there.

IRM scans have helped researchers monitor activity models in specific parts of the brain associated with perception and imagination. The fusiform gyrus was active both when the lines were imaginary and when they were real. However, when the activity crossed a certain threshold, the participants in the study assumed that it was real, said Dijkstra.

“In general, activation during imagination [alone] is not strong enough to cross this threshold, “she added.

When activity in the fusiform gyrus has increased, the activity of anterior insula, a region in the brain prefrontal cortexwhich is largely responsible for cognitive behavior such as decision -making and problem solving. It is almost as if the anterior insula “reads” a signal of reality of the fusiform gyrus, noted the researchers in their article. However, the mechanism behind this link between the two brain areas is not yet clear.

One of the limits of the study was that the researchers used very simple stimuli, which did not reflect what people meet in real life, said Dijkstra.

“We are now developing paradigms to include objects, faces or more complicated stimuli type animals,” she said. “Another direction to watch is whether we can confuse people [imagined] The imagery of perception by stimulating, for example, the brain at the right time. “”

Thomas PaceA neuroscientist from the University of Sunshine Coast in Australia who was not involved in the study, said that Dijkstra and the work of his team provide a remarkably simple explanation in the way we distinguish the reality of mental imagery.

The study suggests that “our sense of reality is a judgment based on signal strength, and by its very conception, this system can be influenced by the power of our own mind,” he told Live Science in an e-mail. It is an “observation which helps to explain how the surveillance of reality can fail and lays the foundations for understanding complex experiences such as hallucinations”.

Future research will have to examine more complex stimuli, such as faces, to establish how this threshold-based system works on different types of visual treatment, he said. The experiences of the real world are also generally coherent on several senses and align with our expectations on the way in which events take place in logical sequences – and these indices have been omitted in the targeted visual task of the study.

“Even more important,” said Pace, “examining this system in clinical populations where surveillance of reality is disturbed – as in schizophrenia – could give an overview of both the robustness of these mechanisms and their clinical relevance.”