Imagination is an important cognitive mechanism for transforming disparate parts into unified wholes. It enables the ability to assemble a meal from the contents of one's refrigerator, or construct a ship from raw iron ore. It similarly allows us to extract parts from wholes. Imagination allows the shipwright to see a timber knee within the crotch of a tree and calculate the planks its trunk will provide. The brain actively evaluates visual perception in real time and determines whether something is real based on a "[reality threshold](https://www.quantamagazine.org/is-it-real-or-imagined-how-your-brain-tells-the-difference-20230524/)." How does the reality threshold form? - The "Perky effect" [describes](https://www.jstor.org/stable/1413350?origin=crossref&seq=2) a phenomenon in which a perception that matches intentional imagining will not be recognized as real. - Perception and imagination mix because both use the same neural pathways within the primary visual cortex. If the mixed signal is strong enough, we may perceive something imaginary as real. What implications might be drawn between facts and [[Belief|beliefs]] from this discovery? - Visual imagery and imagined imagery occur at different [layers](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/664870v1) of the visual cortex. - Is imagination simply [a form of perception](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-019-0202-9)?