While past research has hinted at an overlap in relevant brain regions, the new work drills down to the cellular level. The discovery could help improve treatments for memory disorders, such as dementia, and certain psychiatric conditions, like schizophrenia April 22, 2026 10:00 a.m. The researchers studied neural activity in 16 participants with epilepsy who had electrodes in their brains. Maskot via Getty Images Visualizing an object in the mind’s eye allows us to remember the face of someone we met long ago, or to picture an item we misplaced. “I can look at an object in the world around me, but I can also close my eyes and imagine the object,” says  Varun Wadia , a brain scientist now at Cedars-Sinai, to Jon Hamilton at  NPR . For a long time, scientists haven’t quite understood the neural mechanisms behind mental imagery in humans.…