The brain does not distinguish between imagining an event and experiencing it in reality, which can be leveraged for learning.

“Many people have heard perhaps that when you imagine something happening that your brain doesn't know the difference between that imagination of the thing happening and the real thing happening Turns out that is not true it is simply not true however there is somewhat of an equivalence between a real experience and an imagined experience and we'll talk about the difference between those and how that can be leveraged in order to get the the most out of mental training and visualization”