Varun Wadia
π€ SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Researchers wanted to understand how memory and imagination work together in the brain.
Varun Wadia of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Caltech says it takes both functions to accomplish something people do every day.
I can look at an object in the world around me, but I can also close my eyes and imagine the object.
So Wadia and a team studied the activity of more than 700 neurons in 16 people.
The scientists found that the same neurons that fire when someone looks at an object also fire when a person imagines that object.
The finding supports earlier evidence from brain scans suggesting that seeing and imagining activate the same circuits.