{"id":234900,"date":"2026-04-10T03:30:41","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T08:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/people-use-the-same-neurons-to-see-and-imagine-objects-study-shows"},"modified":"2026-04-10T03:30:41","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T08:30:41","slug":"people-use-the-same-neurons-to-see-and-imagine-objects-study-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/people-use-the-same-neurons-to-see-and-imagine-objects-study-shows","title":{"rendered":"People use the same neurons to see and imagine objects, study shows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/people-use-the-same-neurons-to-see-and-imagine-objects-study-shows.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Why can images of things we have seen seem so real when we later recall them from memory? A new study led by Cedars-Sinai Health <i>Science<\/i>s University investigators sheds light on the answer. The research shows that the same brain neurons are activated when we imagine something and when we perceive something. The research, led by Cedars-Sinai, is the first to provide a detailed understanding of the shared mechanism that underlies visual perception and creation of mental images in the human brain. It was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.adt8343\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal Science.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe generate a mental image of an object that we have seen before by reactivating the brain cells we used to see it in the first place,\u201d said Ueli Rutishauser, Ph.D., director of the Center for Neural <i>Science<\/i> and Medicine and professor of Neurosurgery, Neurology and Biomedical <i>Science<\/i>s at Cedars-Sinai Health <i>Science<\/i>s University, and the study\u2019s joint senior author.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur study revealed the code that we use to re-create the images.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why can images of things we have seen seem so real when we later recall them from memory? A new study led by Cedars-Sinai Health Sciences University investigators sheds light on the answer. The research shows that the same brain neurons are activated when we imagine something and when we perceive something. The research, led [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1495,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-health","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234900\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}