Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

.jp. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, a podcast from Scientific American.

I'm Stefan Montali.

If I asked you to visualize, say, Harry Potter, you'd probably have no problem picturing him in your mind.

A teenage wizard with black hair, glasses, a thunderbolt-shaped scar on his forehead, and a wand in his hand.

It would almost be as if you were pulling up a photograph in your head.

This ability to visualize is often called the mind's eye, and most people would say it's as

inherent as breathing. But it turns out that's not quite true. Estimates say about 1% of the

population live with an extreme form of a condition called affantasia. Those who have

it can't visualize anything in their head. So when they try and imagine that think about what an

apple looks like, it's just nothing. It's black on black. For example, when I think about an apple,

I can catch a conscious experience of an apple. I can see a stem, I can see a leaf, I can see a drop of water on there.

It's not like holding an apple in my hand, but I have an experience of an apple.

Joel Pearson is a professor of cognitive neuroscience and director of the Future Minds Lab

at the University of New South Wales and Australia.

He's been studying mental imagery, including in the

context of Afantasia and cognition since 2008. One of the main questions, he says, has always been

finding a way to accurately measure it. Back then, almost no one, it's only a few people

studying visual imagery because it was so hard to measure, right? It was just

...