"Imagining the future depends on much of the same neural machinery that is needed for remembering the past," he writes.
We've learned, for instance, that some of the same neural systems that are active when we are in pain become engaged when we observe the suffering of others.
Your brain forms the same neural connections and muscle memory whether you are imagining the task or actually doing it.
This has led to a reassessment of the previous assumption that the clitoris and "g-spot" were separate entities: instead, they form the north and south of the same neural structure.
Tapping into the same neural pathways and reward centres that make people yearn for chocolate or nicotine, it ramps up the activity of dopamine, which in turn strengthens memories.
Millions of others suffer from profound anxiety, debilitating phobias, and the cravings of addiction; those emotions appear to be formed in the same neural pathways, which means that a successful treatment for one condition might also work for others.
The same neural circuitry involved in the highs and lows of abusing drugs is activated by winning or losing money, anticipating a good meal or seeking beautiful faces to look at, Dr. Breiter said.
When a female prairie vole's brain is artificially infused with oxytocin, a hormone that produces some of the same neural rewards as nicotine and cocaine, she'll quickly become attached to the nearest male.
He speculated that the same neural pathways involved in O.C.D. were connected to hypochondria; high doses of serotonin-absorption inhibitors like Prozac had been reported to alleviate some types of O.C.D.
The hallucination is convincingly real, produced by the same neural pathways as actual perception, and yet no one else seems to see it.
Play certainly seems to tickle some of the same neural circuits in both species.
