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The ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou dreamt of being a butterfly and, upon waking up, couldn't distinguish whether he was Zhuang Zhou dreaming of being a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming of being Zhuang Zhou. In this image, the Chinese character for "butterfly" is received by the retina and subsequently projected to early visual cortex. Through a posterior-to-anterior cortical hierarchy, this symbolic cue triggers the generation of the mental imagery of a butterfly in higher-order parietal cortex, providing a basis for how mental imagery is formed and how the brain distinguishes between imagined and perceived experiences. For more information, see the article by Li et al. (pages 6508–6524). Cover image: Zhujun Shao.