visual imagery is the ability to create mental representations of things, people, and places that are absent from an individual’s visual field. this ability is crucial to problem-solving tasks, memory, and spatial reasoning. neuroscientists have found that imagery and perception share many of the same neural substrates, or areas of the brain that function similarly during both imagery and perception, such as the visual cortex and higher visual areas. kosslyn and colleagues (1999) showed that the early visual cortex, area 17 and area 18/19, is activated during visual imagery. they found that inhibition of these areas through repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rtms) resulted in impaired visual perception and imagery. furthermore, research conducted with lesioned patients has revealed that visual imagery and visual perception have the same representational organization. this has been concluded from patients in which impaired perception also experience visual imagery deficits at the same level of the mental representation.