Once the mechanisms and areas that allow the brain to understand if a stimulus is real or just thought. They will help those suffering from schizophrenia.
Think intensely of a red car. Now look up and fix it as it is parked in front of you. What is the difference for your brain? A study published in the scientific journal Neuron It helps to shed light on the ways in which we distinguish imagination and reality and on the areas involved in this – only apparently simple – process.
The discoveries could help those suffering from psychiatric disorders that alter the relationship with reality. Like the schizophreniaa chronic disease that strongly interferes with daily life and that affects about 24 million people in the world. Among the most recognizable symptoms of this disease there is precisely theperceptual alterationwhich manifests itself through delusions (false convictions) and hallucinations (false perceptions). These symptoms, which fall within the category of psychosisthey join by thought, language and disorganized motor behaviors and indicate a loss of contact with the real world.
Real or imaginary experiences: as the brain reacts
Many of the areas that activate when we witness a real scene “light up” even in the homework. So much so that “until recently, it was not clear how the brain distinguished between these real and imaginary experiences,” says Nadine Dijkstra, an expert researcher of computational and neural mechanisms of the mental imagination of the University College London.
Dijkstra and colleagues asked 26 volunteers to observe a specific figure, weakly outlined within a noisy background on a screen, and to say if the shrewd shape was actually present or not. In half of the cases the figure was there, in half no. At the same time, the participants had to imagine a figure equal to what they had to look for, or a different one, and to indicate how vivid their imagination was in both circumstances.
When the volunteers had to imagine the same figure given to be looking for, obviously their imagination was more vivid. And they seemed more likely to say that they saw something, even when in the “background noise” of the screen there was no image. It was therefore more likely that participants would exchange simple mental images with reality.
Imagination vs reality: the role of the fusiform lap
The analysis of the brain of participants with functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) have made it possible to understand that the distinction between imagination and reality was mainly entrusted to fusiform lapa part of the temporal lobe (one of the four main lobes of the brain cortex). This area is involved in the processing of complex chromatic and visual information.
THE’intensity of the activity of the fusiform lap could predict whether people would judge that experience as a real or imaginary – regardless of whether it was or not.
When the activity of this area was more intense, the volunteers were more likely to say that the figure was present.
Usually, when you only imagine, the activation of the fusiform lap is weaker, and this helps us to understand that that image is not real, but lives in the mind. However – it emerges from the study – very vivid experiences of imagination can hyperactivate the fusiform lap and lead to believing that a figure is real. “The brain uses the intensity of sensory signals To distinguish between imagination and reality »explains Dijkstra.
Schizophrenia and reality exam
When an image looks real, the fusiform lap is helped in its task byfront insulaa part of the prefrontal cortex already associated with the metacognitionthat is, the ability to think about our mind.
Having identified these brain structures and mechanisms that allow you to distinguish imagination and reality could help to clarify that What happens in the brain with schizophrenia. What makes it difficult, for patients who suffer from it, to distinguish between real perceptions and imagination?
