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Brain activation

The neocortex and thalamus are crucial in controlling the brain's imagination, as well as other functions such as consciousness and abstract thought. Imagination involves many different brain functions, including emotions, memory, and thoughts.

Visual imagery involves a network of brain areas from the frontal cortex to sensory areas, overlapping with the default mode network, and can function much like a weak version of afferent perception.

A study that used fMRI while subjects were asked to imagine precise visual figures, to mentally disassemble them, or mentally blend them, showed activity in the occipital, frontoparietal, posterior parietal, precuneus, and dorsolateral prefrontal regions of the subject's brains.