Why is the motor cortex active when someone only imagines saying a word? · Grey Matter

Imagining a movement runs part of the same preparation as making it, only weaker and without the final command reaching the muscles, and speech behaves the same way.

Why is the motor cortex active when someone only imagines saying a word?

Imagining a movement runs part of the same preparation as making it, only weaker and without the final command reaching the muscles, and speech behaves the same way. Implants in the speech part of the motor cortex of four people with paralysis found that imagined words produced patterns much like those of attempted words, at lower strength, clear enough to decode sentences from them in real time. The difference between the two is consistent enough that a decoder can tell them apart and listen only to the attempt.