Explainer · 2 min read
Can the brain react before an image appears?
Published on
Yes: the brain can prepare for an event before it happens. When you are waiting for a sound, your brain activity may already reflect that expectation.
Isabelle Hoxha and colleagues studied this phenomenon in 42 participants, who were asked to identify images or sounds. In some trials, a cue correctly predicted the type of stimulus 80% of the time.
The researchers recorded electrical brain activity before the stimulus appeared. In trials with a cue, a computer program distinguished anticipation of an image from anticipation of a sound with an average accuracy of 66%.
The program was therefore recognising the brain’s preparation. This finding did not show that participants knew about an unpredictable future event.
To investigate presentiment, researchers would need to go further: record brain activity, then randomly select the target only after that measurement, while preventing any information leakage.
Predicting from clues and anticipating an as-yet unknown target are two different questions. This study provides a tool for distinguishing them more precisely: identifying what the brain expects, trial by trial.
Further reading: Bulletin of 11 September 2026 (in French).
Source: Hoxha et al. (2026), “Modality-specific predictive templates in pre-stimulus EEG activity”, Neuropsychologia. Record and abstract.