WEBVTT - The Science of Imagination 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:02.400 Hey, please take a second and leave us a review 0:00:02.480 --> 0:00:06.279 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to the podcast. 0:00:06.960 --> 0:00:11.400 Thanks a lot. Hey, Welcome to Science Stuff, a production 0:00:11.520 --> 0:00:14.920 of iHeartRadio. I'm horehitch Ham, and today we're tackling the 0:00:15.080 --> 0:00:20.520 science of imagination. What is imagination, how does it work 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:23.240 in the brain, and do some people really have more 0:00:23.320 --> 0:00:27.320 imagination than others. We're going to talk to two neuroscientists 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:30.520 about this, one of whom has a new theory about 0:00:30.520 --> 0:00:34.760 how your brain splits between imagination and reality and how 0:00:34.800 --> 0:00:38.120 it can affect your mental health. So close your eyes, 0:00:38.280 --> 0:00:41.960 imagine yourself in a nice, beautiful beach, and relax as 0:00:41.960 --> 0:00:47.120 we think up new thoughts about the science of imagination. Enjoy. 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:54.920 Hey everyone, Today we're going to start our discussion on 0:00:55.040 --> 0:00:59.840 imagination by talking about people who can't use their imagination. 0:01:00.280 --> 0:01:03.000 Believe it or not, there is a characteristic of some 0:01:03.080 --> 0:01:07.399 people called a fantasia, in which they are unable to 0:01:07.959 --> 0:01:12.119 or have a hard time picking up images or imagining things. 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:15.040 It's actually more common than you think. To tell us 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:19.119 about it, here's my friend, Professor Dwayne Godwin, the neuroscientists 0:01:19.200 --> 0:01:23.800 and the co author of the book out of your mind. Well, 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:25.040 thank you doctor Godwin for joining you. 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:27.080 Y it's nice to be here, or hey, good to 0:01:27.080 --> 0:01:27.720 see you again. 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:30.440 Did you ever imagine you'd be on my show so much? 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:32.039 I sit around visualizing it. 0:01:33.720 --> 0:01:34.760 And you get could salts. 0:01:35.600 --> 0:01:40.640 Yeah, it's an interesting feeling. It's a mixture of terror 0:01:40.760 --> 0:01:41.679 and excitement. 0:01:41.760 --> 0:01:44.039 We'll leave it at interesting. That's what we can say. Okay, 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:46.920 you said there are people who are not as good 0:01:47.040 --> 0:01:50.160 or can't sometimes even use their imaginations. What do we 0:01:50.200 --> 0:01:52.320 know about that? When did we first learn about that? 0:01:52.640 --> 0:01:56.480 Well, we know this from way back. This is something 0:01:56.560 --> 0:02:01.560 that was described before anyone scanned brains. Plato compared memory 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:05.800 and imagery to impressions in a block of wax, and 0:02:06.080 --> 0:02:10.280 even he had observations that people had different abilities to 0:02:10.360 --> 0:02:14.920 do that. He called it fantasia, just like the Disney movie. 0:02:14.960 --> 0:02:18.640 Oh yeah, because it's sort of phantom images. Right, So 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:21.520 what would be the absence of that That would be 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:26.560 called by scientists a fantasia. So that's a lifelong absence 0:02:26.720 --> 0:02:29.880 or near absence of voluntary visual imaging. 0:02:30.960 --> 0:02:34.720 Yes, some people are just not able to imagine visual images. 0:02:35.000 --> 0:02:36.959 If I asked you to picture in your head and 0:02:37.200 --> 0:02:40.200 apple and to imagine that it's red and has a 0:02:40.240 --> 0:02:42.919 shiny coat in it with beads of water on its skin. 0:02:43.320 --> 0:02:47.080 Most of you could do it, but some experts estimate 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:50.840 about two to four percent of the population simply can't 0:02:50.960 --> 0:02:53.840 do it. And this was first explored in the late 0:02:53.919 --> 0:02:58.200 eighteen hundreds by a somewhat controversial figure in science. 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:02.720 The first person actually study it was a person who's 0:03:02.800 --> 0:03:05.720 kind of problematic in the history of science. His name 0:03:05.800 --> 0:03:09.160 was Galton, and this is a fellow who came up 0:03:09.160 --> 0:03:12.519 with a lot of modern statistics and notions of hypothesis 0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:15.320 testing and those sorts of things. But we also have 0:03:15.400 --> 0:03:19.440 to acknowledge that he had some troubling ideas about eugenics. 0:03:20.120 --> 0:03:22.400 So one thing he did do though, he did one 0:03:22.440 --> 0:03:25.920 of the first studies. He mailed a questionnaire to a 0:03:26.000 --> 0:03:28.640 group of people, i think at a boys' school where 0:03:28.639 --> 0:03:31.720 he asked them to rate how clearly they could picture 0:03:31.960 --> 0:03:35.920 an ordinary scene like your breakfast table. And so the 0:03:36.000 --> 0:03:39.800 replies spanned from, you know, people who had zero ability 0:03:39.840 --> 0:03:43.720 to do that to those that could reflect and recall 0:03:43.960 --> 0:03:46.480 just about everything that was at the table. 0:03:46.320 --> 0:03:48.600 Meaning that he found that some people were really good 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:51.640 at imagining their breakfast stable, and some people were just like, 0:03:52.080 --> 0:03:53.240 I don't see anything. 0:03:53.120 --> 0:03:55.960 Really bad at it. And then he sort of characterized 0:03:55.960 --> 0:03:59.320 it in terms of the proportions of people. So let's 0:03:59.320 --> 0:04:02.000 describe how tall people are, and so you might send 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:04.440 out a survey, Please measure yourself and tell me how 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:06.680 tall you are. Well, then you would come up with something. 0:04:06.760 --> 0:04:09.440 It would be sort of a normal distribution bell shaped 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:12.880 curve that people see in statistics, right, And so he 0:04:13.040 --> 0:04:15.840 was doing a similar thing, but doing it towards these 0:04:15.920 --> 0:04:19.039 mental images. And so if you think about the bell 0:04:19.080 --> 0:04:23.560 shaped curve, some have zero ability to visualize or imagine 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:28.840 and others have an advanced, almost photographic capacity to relate 0:04:28.960 --> 0:04:31.440 the items that were at their breakfast table. And then 0:04:31.480 --> 0:04:33.360 most of the people were sort of in the middle. 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:35.680 I see, you found there was sort of a range 0:04:35.720 --> 0:04:37.840 of people. It wasn't like some people could, some people couldn't, 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:40.520 some people were better, some people were okay, and some 0:04:40.560 --> 0:04:41.719 people were worse at it. 0:04:41.839 --> 0:04:43.960 Yeah, that's the idea. 0:04:44.080 --> 0:04:47.680 Now you might be wondering, is this all self reported surveys? 0:04:48.240 --> 0:04:50.960 People could be biased or they could just be making 0:04:50.960 --> 0:04:55.839 stuff up ironically about not being able to imagine things. 0:04:56.200 --> 0:04:58.480 How do we know there are people who really can't 0:04:58.800 --> 0:05:03.240 visualize things? Well, modern science has actually answered this question. 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:07.200 How did they know it wasn't just subjective? 0:05:07.520 --> 0:05:11.560 Well, if we fast forward to the modern world, people 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:16.000 do experiments now using brain imagery as something called binocular 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:20.440 rivalry priming. So that's asking people to picture a certain 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:25.080 pattern and it creates a stress between your two eyes 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:28.200 and how your two eyes encode disinformation in your brain. 0:05:29.080 --> 0:05:31.680 Okay, this is kind of an interesting test. It's a 0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:35.240 little debated whether it actually measures how well you can imagine. 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:38.800 But here's how it works. You wear special goggles and 0:05:38.839 --> 0:05:42.160 you're shown two different images to each of your eyes. 0:05:42.440 --> 0:05:46.320 For example, your right eye sees a red kangaroo and 0:05:46.400 --> 0:05:50.680 your left eye sees a blue zebra. Now, normally your 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:53.760 brain freaks out a little because each of your eyes 0:05:53.920 --> 0:05:58.520 is seeing something different, but eventually your brain makes the choice. 0:05:58.839 --> 0:06:02.440 You either see the red kangaroo or the blue zebra. 0:06:03.080 --> 0:06:06.160 And typically it's kind of random. Half the time you 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:08.760 might see the red animal and the other times you 0:06:08.800 --> 0:06:12.080 would see the blue one. But psychologists can do something 0:06:12.120 --> 0:06:16.120 called priming where you're asked to imagine a color right 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:19.240 before you see the two images. Someone might say to 0:06:19.279 --> 0:06:24.159 you imagine the color red or imagine the color blue, 0:06:24.800 --> 0:06:27.800 and for most people that's enough to tip your brain 0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:31.160 to choose the animal of that color. If you are 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:34.719 imagining red, your brain will ignore the blue zebra and 0:06:34.760 --> 0:06:37.960 you will see the red kangaroo. But if you're not 0:06:38.040 --> 0:06:41.800 able to imagine images, not even colors, then this has 0:06:41.920 --> 0:06:45.279 no effect on you, and you will randomly see the 0:06:45.360 --> 0:06:50.159 red or blue animal. Another test for avantasia is for 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:52.719 you to imagine a bright light. 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:57.520 There's another test as well that we know that it's 0:06:57.560 --> 0:07:03.320 not subjective. Imagined brightness makes most people's pupils constrict a 0:07:03.320 --> 0:07:03.800 little bit. 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:05.560 Ah, So if. 0:07:05.440 --> 0:07:08.560 You imagine, just imagine a bright light. If you're a 0:07:08.560 --> 0:07:11.720 sided person and you can imagine a bright light, your 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:14.760 pupils will actually shut down just a little bit, right. 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:18.720 But people with a fantasia can't do that. Don't do that. 0:07:18.800 --> 0:07:22.240 There are pupils don't move at all. Yes, if I 0:07:22.360 --> 0:07:25.440 ask you to take a second right now and imagine 0:07:25.480 --> 0:07:29.000 seeing a really bright light shining at you, for most people, 0:07:29.240 --> 0:07:32.840 their pupils will automatically close up a little as if 0:07:32.840 --> 0:07:36.840 they were actually seeing a bright light. But if you're 0:07:36.840 --> 0:07:40.400 not able to imagine visual images like that your pupils 0:07:40.440 --> 0:07:44.320 would see the same. Now, there's two interesting things about 0:07:44.320 --> 0:07:48.600 a fantasia. First, he said, there's an opposite characteristic in 0:07:48.680 --> 0:07:52.680 some people called hyper fantasia. 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:56.720 So there's something called hyper fantasia. If somebody can really 0:07:57.200 --> 0:08:02.720 conjure very grandular mental images with high fidelity, they can 0:08:02.800 --> 0:08:06.640 show richer scene details and stronger coupling between the frontal 0:08:06.760 --> 0:08:08.600 control networks and visual cortex. 0:08:08.880 --> 0:08:13.080 Meaning people who are really really imaginative hyper fantasia. They 0:08:13.480 --> 0:08:17.160 activate more brain areas when they're imaginating than people who 0:08:17.440 --> 0:08:18.360 are not as good at. 0:08:18.240 --> 0:08:20.520 It, or the same areas just more strongly. 0:08:21.280 --> 0:08:24.120 I see. We'll get more into the brain areas that 0:08:24.160 --> 0:08:27.600 are active when you use your imagination later in the program. 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:31.680 But what's interesting is that this characteristic of either having 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:35.480 a really vivid visual imagination or not being able to 0:08:35.559 --> 0:08:38.720 visualize things can sort of affect who you are and 0:08:38.760 --> 0:08:42.680 what you end up doing in life. 0:08:42.920 --> 0:08:46.640 There has been some work to characterize how people fall 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:50.600 into different types of jobs based on their ability to 0:08:50.960 --> 0:08:54.160 form these images or not. And it may surprise you 0:08:54.280 --> 0:08:57.719 that scientists and engineers tend to be on the a 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:01.320 fantasia side. Really, a lot of what they do is 0:09:01.360 --> 0:09:05.280 in the realm of mathematics and logic and not necessarily 0:09:05.520 --> 0:09:08.880 in the areas related to the formation of images. So 0:09:09.120 --> 0:09:12.480 you know, it's not a universal Yeah, Obviously, people that 0:09:12.640 --> 0:09:16.600 are advanced in their ability to form visual images probably 0:09:16.640 --> 0:09:19.400 are going to be more apt to go to visual 0:09:19.480 --> 0:09:21.880 arts and you know, do things that are more creative. 0:09:23.080 --> 0:09:25.600 Now, you might be wondering at this point, like I was, 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:28.840 if this means that some people are just born with 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:32.440 more imagination than others, and if it means you're stuck 0:09:32.480 --> 0:09:36.160 for life to have or not have a lot of imagination. 0:09:36.720 --> 0:09:39.440 Ask doctor Godwin this question, and he asked this with 0:09:39.600 --> 0:09:43.160 two points. The first is that you thinks imagination is 0:09:43.200 --> 0:09:47.840 something you can learn to do better. Now, do you 0:09:47.840 --> 0:09:51.679 think this is something that is learned or some people 0:09:52.160 --> 0:09:55.079 genetically just have a brain that's more imaginative than others. 0:09:55.320 --> 0:09:59.160 I think it's probably both. I would say that, you know, 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:02.679 you certainly to the table with a certain genetic disposition 0:10:02.960 --> 0:10:05.120 to be able to do something like that. But I 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:09.320 could also imagine that we can with practice improve our 0:10:09.360 --> 0:10:12.680 ability to imagine things. You know, For example, in the 0:10:12.800 --> 0:10:15.640 exercise that we started with, I asked you to imagine 0:10:15.640 --> 0:10:19.240 an apple, Well, what if I asked you to imagine 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:22.840 two apples or three apples. You know, in a way, 0:10:22.880 --> 0:10:24.839 you can sort of see how you could build your 0:10:24.880 --> 0:10:28.679 mental muscle, so to speak, and your ability to imagine 0:10:29.000 --> 0:10:32.760 by undertaking certain exercises that would lead you to create 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:34.280 these images more effectively. 0:10:34.559 --> 0:10:34.920 I see. 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:38.040 So I'm not saying this as a scientist necessarily. I'm 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:40.160 just saying that there are a few things that we 0:10:40.280 --> 0:10:44.240 can't improve with practice, and I can imagine that mental 0:10:44.280 --> 0:10:47.040 imagery would be something that could be improved if you 0:10:47.120 --> 0:10:50.240 have the capacity to do it at all. 0:10:50.280 --> 0:10:53.319 And the second answer to this question is that, apparently 0:10:53.600 --> 0:10:57.199 there are many different kinds of imagination. Being able to 0:10:57.240 --> 0:11:00.920 imagine images is just one of them. For example, there's 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:05.000 the ability to imagine sounds and songs and voices. Some 0:11:05.040 --> 0:11:08.400 people can do that really well, like musicians and composers, 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:11.760 and some people can't. Not being able to do that 0:11:12.000 --> 0:11:15.679 is called an aurelia. But it goes even deeper than that. 0:11:16.520 --> 0:11:19.800 The other interesting thing about this is just because you 0:11:19.840 --> 0:11:22.599 can't do this doesn't mean you don't have an imagination. 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:25.200 I think that's an important thing to stay because there 0:11:25.280 --> 0:11:28.480 might be someone out there saying, wow, what are you saying. 0:11:28.679 --> 0:11:31.040 Are you saying that because I can't create a mental image, 0:11:31.200 --> 0:11:34.120 I don't have an imagination. No, I'm not saying that 0:11:34.200 --> 0:11:36.640 at all. So I'll give you one example of that. 0:11:36.840 --> 0:11:39.400 So in our book that you and I wrote together, 0:11:39.480 --> 0:11:41.120 we have the story of Helen Keller. 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:44.840 Helen Keller, if you're not familiar, lived around the beginning 0:11:44.880 --> 0:11:48.640 of the twentieth century. She lost her ability to see 0:11:48.760 --> 0:11:51.200 or hear at a very young age. She was both 0:11:51.280 --> 0:11:55.679 blind and deaf, and yet she became a world famous author, advocate, 0:11:56.080 --> 0:11:56.920 and speaker. 0:11:58.400 --> 0:12:01.240 No one would argue that Helen Keller, who was an 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:05.440 advanced scholar, did not have an imagination, because she had 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:08.480 to be able to imagine the world as a result 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:12.840 of the tactle sensations that she had and her ability 0:12:12.840 --> 0:12:17.640 to sense vibrations and intellectually, she had very complex ideas 0:12:17.679 --> 0:12:22.320 that she was able to express even through her challenges. 0:12:23.080 --> 0:12:27.199 She had to have had some means of constructing a 0:12:27.320 --> 0:12:30.080 version of the world that she could work with. 0:12:30.640 --> 0:12:37.400 I see, sometimes we think that imagination is only imagining images, songs, 0:12:37.600 --> 0:12:42.120 or sounds, but actually imagination maybe goes deeper and can 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:47.320 include concepts and ideas and different representations of the world. 0:12:47.800 --> 0:12:50.320 Yeah, I think there are many ways, even emotions. 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:53.800 That sets us up for our next segment when we 0:12:53.840 --> 0:12:56.840 come back, we're going to talk to another cognitive scientist 0:12:56.960 --> 0:13:00.240 who has a general theory of imagination and how it 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:03.079 relates to everything from how we come up with ideas 0:13:03.200 --> 0:13:05.440 to how it helps us make meaning out of life, 0:13:05.720 --> 0:13:09.200 and how it even affects our mental health. So stay 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:24.560 with us, we'll be right back. Hey, welcome back. We're 0:13:24.559 --> 0:13:27.960 talking about the signs of imagination, and so far we've 0:13:28.040 --> 0:13:31.400 learned that not everyone can imagine the same way. There 0:13:31.400 --> 0:13:35.600 are people with the characteristic of having incredibly vivid imaginations, 0:13:35.880 --> 0:13:39.319 and there are people who can't visualize images, or can't 0:13:39.360 --> 0:13:43.480 imagine sounds or voices or music. Just imagine what it 0:13:43.480 --> 0:13:46.240 would be like to be someone like that, to not 0:13:46.320 --> 0:13:49.200 be able to picture something in your brain, or not 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:51.800 be able to hum a tune in your head. Their 0:13:51.880 --> 0:13:55.960 way of processing the world is very different from others. Now, 0:13:56.000 --> 0:13:58.520 what's interesting is that I just asked you to imagine 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:00.680 what it would be like to be such a person, 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:03.400 and we actually thought about it for a second. You 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:07.120 used your imagination. In other words, imagination is not just 0:14:07.240 --> 0:14:11.280 visualizing images or hearing sounds in your brain. It's also 0:14:11.320 --> 0:14:14.960 the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes, which 0:14:14.960 --> 0:14:17.719 makes sense of all these different flavors of imagination. I 0:14:17.800 --> 0:14:22.120 reached out to another contractive scientists, doctor Jessica Andrews Hannah, 0:14:22.280 --> 0:14:26.560 a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of Arizona. 0:14:26.680 --> 0:14:30.880 According to doctor Andrews Hannah, imagination is basically the default 0:14:30.960 --> 0:14:35.200 mode that your brain operates it. Well, thank you, doctor 0:14:35.240 --> 0:14:36.440 Andrews Hannah for joining us. 0:14:36.720 --> 0:14:38.600 I'm happy to be here, thanks for reaching out. 0:14:38.800 --> 0:14:41.800 Awesome. So, as you might know, I'm someone who makes 0:14:41.800 --> 0:14:45.680 his living using his imagination, but I've never thought about 0:14:45.720 --> 0:14:48.640 what it is, or how it works or what's happening 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:51.360 in my brain. So maybe to start us off, can 0:14:51.400 --> 0:14:53.920 you tell us what is imaginating? Like, how do you 0:14:53.960 --> 0:14:54.760 define what it is? 0:14:55.240 --> 0:14:59.680 Yeah, that's a great question, particularly because different fields of 0:14:59.720 --> 0:15:04.080 stuffy actually take a slightly different approach. So there, for example, 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:08.600 is a field of imagination research focusing on our ability 0:15:08.800 --> 0:15:13.000 to engage in creative thought. This idea that I can 0:15:13.200 --> 0:15:18.360 imagine something new and novel that maybe has a particular use, 0:15:18.880 --> 0:15:22.120 you know, that might solve a problem. Right, that's very 0:15:22.160 --> 0:15:25.720 different than other kinds of imagination that have been talked 0:15:25.720 --> 0:15:29.200 about in terms of I can see something an image 0:15:29.280 --> 0:15:32.760 in my head. You know, I'm imagining that I was 0:15:32.800 --> 0:15:35.400 at my tenth birthday party, and I can see it 0:15:35.520 --> 0:15:38.920 clearly as if I'm mentally time traveling to the past, 0:15:38.960 --> 0:15:43.440 and almost as if I'm there right. So those flavors 0:15:43.480 --> 0:15:47.640 of imagination are really highlighting the discrepant ways that people 0:15:47.720 --> 0:15:50.280 might talk about in psychology and neuroscience. 0:15:51.040 --> 0:15:54.760 Here, doctor ANDREWS. Hana is saying that defining imagination is 0:15:54.880 --> 0:15:57.920 tricky because we used to try to describe lots of 0:15:57.960 --> 0:16:00.920 things we do with our brain, from coming up with 0:16:01.040 --> 0:16:04.480 new ideas, to picturing images or sounds in our heads, 0:16:04.640 --> 0:16:07.960 to imagining what someone else might be thinking. If you 0:16:07.960 --> 0:16:10.920 think about it, even remembering a memory from your past 0:16:11.280 --> 0:16:15.440 uses your imagination. You are conjuring up impressions that aren't 0:16:15.480 --> 0:16:18.680 really there. And planning for the future is also using 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:22.800 your imagination. When you're thinking ahead, you're thinking about and 0:16:22.960 --> 0:16:27.520 envisioning events or scenarios that haven't happened yet. So one 0:16:27.520 --> 0:16:30.360 way to think about imagination is that it's everything your 0:16:30.400 --> 0:16:35.080 brain does when it's not engaging with woods around you. Basically, 0:16:35.160 --> 0:16:39.920 imagination is synonymous with your inner life. 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:44.120 So the nice thing about adopting this broad cond of 0:16:44.120 --> 0:16:48.760 dictionary definition of imagination is that it's encompassing all the 0:16:48.800 --> 0:16:53.400 different flavors and facets, and it's kind of highlighting that 0:16:53.520 --> 0:16:56.280 what they all have in common is this ability to 0:16:56.600 --> 0:17:00.920 dissociate a bit from our external world and turn our 0:17:00.960 --> 0:17:02.320 thoughts and attention inward. 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:06.479 I see to sort of like have internal experiences that 0:17:06.560 --> 0:17:09.880 are not directly coming from the outside, and those can 0:17:09.960 --> 0:17:13.080 be things in the past, things we project into the future, 0:17:13.200 --> 0:17:17.640 or even things that maybe don't exist right now. Exactly interesting, 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:21.200 So it's sort of related to your inner life. Exactly 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:22.320 what does that mean? 0:17:22.600 --> 0:17:25.400 What is inner life? Our inner mental life includes things 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:30.320 like our memories, our past experiences, our plans, are kind 0:17:30.320 --> 0:17:35.840 of wondering about what if, our daydreams, and mind wandering. 0:17:36.480 --> 0:17:39.200 So in that sense, people can refer to this as 0:17:39.320 --> 0:17:44.640 perceptually decoupled cognition or internal menation or imagination. 0:17:45.800 --> 0:17:48.720 Essentially, what doctor Andrew s Heina is saying is that 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:51.320 if you think about it, whatever you're not interacting with 0:17:51.560 --> 0:17:54.760 or paying attention to the things that are happening around you, 0:17:54.760 --> 0:17:58.240 you're basically living inside your head, and to do that, 0:17:58.520 --> 0:18:02.400 you need to make stuff up, and that requires imagination. 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:06.520 In other words, we all use our imaginations all the time. 0:18:06.920 --> 0:18:11.879 There's no such thing as a person who doesn't have imagination. Next, 0:18:12.119 --> 0:18:15.200 I wanted to know how this all works in your brain. 0:18:16.920 --> 0:18:19.080 So then, what is happening in the brain or what 0:18:19.160 --> 0:18:22.320 does psychologists and neuroscientists understand about what's happening in the 0:18:22.359 --> 0:18:24.080 brain when we use our imagination. 0:18:24.680 --> 0:18:29.600 Yeah, it has most closely been linked to a network 0:18:29.640 --> 0:18:33.880 of brain regions that have collectively been referred to as 0:18:33.920 --> 0:18:37.240 the default mode network. And so this is a very 0:18:37.280 --> 0:18:42.399 interesting set of brain regions that was discovered fairly accidentally 0:18:42.640 --> 0:18:45.320 in the neuroscience literature twenty years ago. 0:18:45.720 --> 0:18:47.720 You said it was sort of discovered accidentally. What does 0:18:47.720 --> 0:18:48.040 that mean. 0:18:48.320 --> 0:18:52.600 Yeah, it's kind of an interesting reflection of the early 0:18:52.680 --> 0:18:57.040 field of cognitive neuroscience in psychology, where in the early 0:18:57.160 --> 0:19:00.880 nineties we're able to put a person in an MRI 0:19:01.359 --> 0:19:04.280 scanner and kind of record what parts of the brain 0:19:04.400 --> 0:19:07.399 were engaged when people were thinking or seeing. So the 0:19:07.520 --> 0:19:13.119 experiments that were done early on mostly involved visual stimuli 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:18.359 or maybe auditory stimuli. Cognitive tasks involving our attention to 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:19.640 our external. 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:21.800 World, like how do we react to things exactly? 0:19:21.840 --> 0:19:23.800 How do we react, how do we see, how do 0:19:23.840 --> 0:19:28.960 we hear, et cetera. And as we know as scientists, 0:19:29.240 --> 0:19:32.160 you know, if we're going to be measuring the effect 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:36.120 associated with an experimental condition, we need to be able 0:19:36.160 --> 0:19:38.919 to reference it to a control condition. 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:44.840 Okay, here's how scientists discovered the brain areas related to imagination. 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:48.639 When we first started scanning brains in an fMRI machine, 0:19:48.920 --> 0:19:52.080 scientists were mostly interested in how the brain reacted to 0:19:52.400 --> 0:19:56.360 and acted on things in the outside world, but as 0:19:56.400 --> 0:19:59.600 a control to have something to compare to, they would 0:19:59.640 --> 0:20:03.639 ask test subjects to just sit there and do nothing. 0:20:04.160 --> 0:20:06.920 The scientists thought that's what they were getting. They thought 0:20:06.920 --> 0:20:09.480 they were getting signals from the brain when it wasn't 0:20:09.560 --> 0:20:13.159 doing anything. And this went on for years and years. 0:20:13.480 --> 0:20:16.200 But then one day someone realized, wait a minute, maybe 0:20:16.240 --> 0:20:18.600 the brain is not doing nothing. 0:20:19.720 --> 0:20:24.040 And it wasn't until about the late nineteen nineties that 0:20:24.280 --> 0:20:27.879 enough experiments had been conducted that researchers could start to 0:20:27.920 --> 0:20:34.160 look at similarities across the studies. Right, And what professor 0:20:34.240 --> 0:20:37.840 named Marcus Rachel discovered is that there also seemed to 0:20:37.840 --> 0:20:40.920 be a consistent set of brain regions that are more 0:20:40.960 --> 0:20:47.040 engaged when we're passively sitting there. And what researchers kind 0:20:47.040 --> 0:20:50.840 of started to realize is that our mind doesn't shut off. 0:20:51.320 --> 0:20:54.600 It's that your attention is turning inward. And it turns 0:20:54.640 --> 0:20:57.359 out when you ask people what was going through your mind, 0:20:57.400 --> 0:21:00.440 people would say, well, in fact, I was thinking about 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:02.960 my past, I was planning my future. I was thinking 0:21:03.000 --> 0:21:05.320 about what I would do after the experiment is over. 0:21:05.920 --> 0:21:08.320 I was bored, and so I was coming up with 0:21:08.720 --> 0:21:13.240 a story or something. Those are all often very spontaneous 0:21:13.520 --> 0:21:15.880 forms of imagination. 0:21:15.760 --> 0:21:18.280 Meaning we don't just use our imagination when we're trying 0:21:18.280 --> 0:21:22.280 to imagine things. It's almost like our default mode is 0:21:22.320 --> 0:21:23.480 to use our imagination. 0:21:23.840 --> 0:21:24.399 Exactly. 0:21:25.520 --> 0:21:28.720 What neuroscientists found was that the brain sort of has 0:21:28.960 --> 0:21:32.800 to modes to it. One is the active mode when 0:21:32.840 --> 0:21:35.600 we're doing things and interacting with the world, and the 0:21:35.640 --> 0:21:38.400 other is the default mode, which is when we let 0:21:38.400 --> 0:21:42.360 our minds wander and daydream. And to wander and daydream 0:21:42.760 --> 0:21:44.240 you need imagination. 0:21:46.600 --> 0:21:51.480 So there is a researcher Nancy Andreasen, and around that 0:21:51.640 --> 0:21:55.240 time she published a study in which she coined the 0:21:55.280 --> 0:22:01.240 acronym rest and rest in her paper, stands for episodic 0:22:01.400 --> 0:22:04.920 silent thought, as it's a resting state, right, isn't it 0:22:05.240 --> 0:22:09.200 a lack of cognition? You're actually engaged in quite a 0:22:09.280 --> 0:22:12.280 lot of cognition. That's what we default to when we're 0:22:12.320 --> 0:22:14.560 otherwise not occupied with, you know, other things. 0:22:14.760 --> 0:22:18.239 That's like the ultimate academic ninja move, Like you come 0:22:18.320 --> 0:22:20.359 up with an acronym that means the opposite of what 0:22:20.440 --> 0:22:22.119 it's it's supposed to be. 0:22:23.000 --> 0:22:27.439 That's like multiple levels of you know. 0:22:28.119 --> 0:22:30.400 Okay, so what is this network? Like, what are these 0:22:30.400 --> 0:22:34.159 brain regions? Okay, As it turns out, there are brain 0:22:34.280 --> 0:22:38.080 regions that we can associate with this day dreaming, mind 0:22:38.119 --> 0:22:41.359 wandering imagination mode of the brain. 0:22:42.600 --> 0:22:45.439 Well, first of all, this default mode network as a 0:22:45.440 --> 0:22:49.160 whole takes up about twenty percent of the whole brain, 0:22:49.480 --> 0:22:53.000 so it's actually a very large network of brain regions 0:22:53.000 --> 0:22:56.720 that are really a representation in all four lobes of 0:22:56.760 --> 0:22:59.399 the brain and the cerebellum. Actually, there's a lot of 0:22:59.400 --> 0:23:04.320 cortical real state dedicated to our ability to engage in imagination, 0:23:04.960 --> 0:23:07.119 and a lot of these regions are on the surface 0:23:07.160 --> 0:23:10.359 of the brain or the cortex, but they also include 0:23:10.440 --> 0:23:15.080 a subcortical representation regions, you know, like the part of 0:23:15.119 --> 0:23:18.600 the basal ganglia and the hippocampus, which we know is 0:23:18.640 --> 0:23:22.399 important for learning and memory. But also there's projections to 0:23:22.920 --> 0:23:28.000 the parietal lobe. There's other projections to other parts of 0:23:28.000 --> 0:23:31.919 the brain as well, the temporal lobe, the frontal cortex, 0:23:32.320 --> 0:23:36.160 the frontal lobe as well. And there's an incredible amount 0:23:36.280 --> 0:23:41.560 of individual variability, Like the position in my brain might 0:23:41.560 --> 0:23:44.760 be slightly different than its position in your brain, so 0:23:45.200 --> 0:23:48.560 our brain representation of imagination that might also relate to 0:23:48.840 --> 0:23:51.440 the idiosyncratic nature of our thoughts. 0:23:51.960 --> 0:23:54.959