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We Weren't Kidding. Imagery is real to a Neuron- Oct 12,
2003 Harvard Medical School Researchers from the Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, used MRI's to look at the neural goings-on in the brain when subjects practiced kinesthetic imagery (imagining how something feels in the body). Healthy subjects imagined the presence of tactile stimulation on the back of their right hands. The MRI results were compared with MRI's showing what regions got activated during actual tactile stimulation of the same area of the same hand. Sure enough, there was a tremendous amount of MRI overlap between imagining the event and having it actually happen in external reality. That's the bottom line. But for those of you who like slogging through the big neurological words, take a deep breath and here goes: during the imagery, contralateral primary and secondary somatosensory areas were activated, along with activity in the left parietal lobe. In addition, there was activity in the left inferior frontal gyri (Brodmann's area 44), the left dorsolateral prefrontal area, the left precentral gyrus, the left insula, and the medial frontal gyrus. In the basal ganglia, there was activity in the left thalamus (ventral posteromedial nucleus) and putamen. So the results are pretty exciting, demonstrating that during kinesthetic (or tactile) imagery, both the primary and secondary somatosensory areas of the brain are recruited. This partially overlaps with what happens in the neural substrates during the perception of actual tactile stimulation. See? I told you I wasn't making this stuff up! Citation:
Yoo SS, Freeman DK, McCarthy JJ 3rd, Jolesz FA. Neural substrates of
tactile imagery: a functional MRI study. Neuroreport. 2003 Mar 24; 14
(4): pp. 581-5 |