Fig. 3.

Neural activity during simulation. N = 16 (data from Wilson-Mendenhall et al., 2013). Participants listened with eyes closed to multimodal descriptions rich in sensory details and imagined each real-world scenario as if it was actually happening to them (i.e. the experiences were high in subjective realism). Contrast presented is scenario immersion > resting baseline; maps are FDR corrected P < 0.05. Left image, x = 1; right image, x = −42. Heightened neural activity in primary visual cortex (not labeled), somatosensory cortex (SSC), and MC during scenario immersion replicated prior simulation research (McNorgan, 2012) and established the validity of the paradigm. Notice that simulation was associated with an increase in BOLD response within primary interoceptive cortex (i.e. the pINS), in the sensory integration network of lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC) (Ongur et al., 2003) and in the thalamus; increased BOLD responses were also seen, as expected, in limbic and paralimbic regions such as the vmPFC, the aINS, the temporal pole (TP), SMA and vlPFC, as well as in the hypothalamus and the subcortical nuclei that control the internal milieu. PAG, periacquiductal gray; PBN, parabrachial nucleus.