Your ability to 'see' things in your mind didn't evolve from your eyes—it came from your gut and inner organs.
March 24, 2026
Original Paper
Simulation Before Vision: Interoceptive Origins of Offline Simulation and the Evolution of Mental Imagery
PsyArXiv · hz8m7_v4
The Takeaway
While we think of mental imagery as 'seeing with the mind's eye,' this paper argues it actually evolved from interoception—the system that monitors your internal body states. Imagery began as a way to predict bodily needs like hunger or heart rate, and only recruited the brain's visual systems later to make those internal predictions more precise.
From the abstract
How did mental imagery evolve, and what adaptive problem did it solve? Research tradition has carried an implicit and largely unexamined assumption that mental imagery evolved from sensory systems. Using visual imagery as my primary case, I argue instead that its origins lie not in sensory cortex but in interoceptive systems. A simulation system with no means of evaluating outcomes has no basis for selecting between them; interoception is what converts predicted outcomes into reasons to act. Dra