The yield of the 16 O(γ, π + p) reaction has been measured in the region of the excitation of the ∆(1232) isobar at high momentum transfers to the residual nuclear system. The experimental data are interpreted within the model taking into account of isobar configurations in the ground state of the 16 O nucleus. Direct and exchange mechanisms of the production of pions with emission of one and two nucleons, which follow from the structures of the density matrices for these reactions, have been considered. The probability of the production of the ∆ isobar in the ground state of the 16 O nucleus has been empirically estimated as P ∆ = 0.019 ± 0.003 ± 0.003.Non-nucleon degrees of freedom of nuclei are involved in the fundamental problem of the interaction between nucleons at intermediate and small distances. The binding energies, magnetic moments, and electromagnetic form factors of nuclei cannot be described if these degrees of freedom are disregarded. All non-nucleon degrees of freedom from nucleon-meson degrees of freedom, which are responsible for meson exchange currents and for isobar configurations of the nuclear wave function, to quark-gluon degrees of freedom responsible for multiquark states in nuclei are currently considered [1]. Nuclear reactions that cannot be described within the model implying the single interaction of an incident particle with bound nucleons of a nucleus can be efficiently used to study non-nucleon degrees of freedom in the ground state of nuclei. Examples of such reactions are the (π + , π − p) reaction in which the charge of the scattered particle changes by 2 e and (p, p ′ π + p) and (γ, π − n) reactions in which systems of particles with the total charge number +2 and -1, respectively, are formed. Since the main decay mode of all nonstrange nucleon resonances is the decay into pions and a nucleon, the listed processes are most sensitive to the manifestations of isobar degrees of freedom. This circumstance was used in [2][3][4][5][6][7] to experimentally estimate the probability P ∆ of isobar configurations in the ground state of nuclei. Experimental data for these reactions are usually interpreted in terms of the knocking-out of an isobar by a high-energy particle.Although isobar configurations in nuclei were studied for a long time (see reviews [8,9]), experimental study of isobar configurations is a difficult problem because of a small probability P ∆ and a large number of background mechanisms of a reaction. The admixture of isobar states in the wavefunction of p-shell nuclei was estimated only in four experimental works [3,4,6,7] and the data in three of them were obtained for hadron-induced reactions.