how is the brain able to give us images when we are imagining something?

Question

how is the brain able to give us images when we are imagining something?

In: Biology

Answer 1

So you know you’ve seen and perceived things in the past, right? When that happened, certain circuits of neurons lit up in your brain.

When you imagine something, some of those similar circuits light up, evoking a less concrete representation than when you were perceiving it directly.

This is ELI5, so there’s obviously more detail to this, but this is the gist.