Speaker 1: Hey, please take a second and leave us a review
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to the podcast.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot. Hey, Welcome to Science Stuff, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. I'm horehitch Ham, and today we're tackling the
Speaker 1: science of imagination. What is imagination, how does it work
Speaker 1: in the brain, and do some people really have more
Speaker 1: imagination than others. We're going to talk to two neuroscientists
Speaker 1: about this, one of whom has a new theory about
Speaker 1: how your brain splits between imagination and reality and how
Speaker 1: it can affect your mental health. So close your eyes,
Speaker 1: imagine yourself in a nice, beautiful beach, and relax as
Speaker 1: we think up new thoughts about the science of imagination. Enjoy.
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, Today we're going to start our discussion on
Speaker 1: imagination by talking about people who can't use their imagination.
Speaker 1: Believe it or not, there is a characteristic of some
Speaker 1: people called a fantasia, in which they are unable to
Speaker 1: or have a hard time picking up images or imagining things.
Speaker 1: It's actually more common than you think. To tell us
Speaker 1: about it, here's my friend, Professor Dwayne Godwin, the neuroscientists
Speaker 1: and the co author of the book out of your mind. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you doctor Godwin for joining you.
Speaker 2: Y it's nice to be here, or hey, good to
Speaker 2: see you again.
Speaker 1: Did you ever imagine you'd be on my show so much?
Speaker 2: I sit around visualizing it.
Speaker 1: And you get could salts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an interesting feeling. It's a mixture of terror
Speaker 2: and excitement.
Speaker 1: We'll leave it at interesting. That's what we can say. Okay,
Speaker 1: you said there are people who are not as good
Speaker 1: or can't sometimes even use their imaginations. What do we
Speaker 1: know about that? When did we first learn about that?
Speaker 2: Well, we know this from way back. This is something
Speaker 2: that was described before anyone scanned brains. Plato compared memory
Speaker 2: and imagery to impressions in a block of wax, and
Speaker 2: even he had observations that people had different abilities to
Speaker 2: do that. He called it fantasia, just like the Disney movie.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, because it's sort of phantom images. Right, So
Speaker 2: what would be the absence of that That would be
Speaker 2: called by scientists a fantasia. So that's a lifelong absence
Speaker 2: or near absence of voluntary visual imaging.
Speaker 1: Yes, some people are just not able to imagine visual images.
Speaker 1: If I asked you to picture in your head and
Speaker 1: apple and to imagine that it's red and has a
Speaker 1: shiny coat in it with beads of water on its skin.
Speaker 1: Most of you could do it, but some experts estimate
Speaker 1: about two to four percent of the population simply can't
Speaker 1: do it. And this was first explored in the late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds by a somewhat controversial figure in science.
Speaker 2: The first person actually study it was a person who's
Speaker 2: kind of problematic in the history of science. His name
Speaker 2: was Galton, and this is a fellow who came up
Speaker 2: with a lot of modern statistics and notions of hypothesis
Speaker 2: testing and those sorts of things. But we also have
Speaker 2: to acknowledge that he had some troubling ideas about eugenics.
Speaker 2: So one thing he did do though, he did one
Speaker 2: of the first studies. He mailed a questionnaire to a
Speaker 2: group of people, i think at a boys' school where
Speaker 2: he asked them to rate how clearly they could picture
Speaker 2: an ordinary scene like your breakfast table. And so the
Speaker 2: replies spanned from, you know, people who had zero ability
Speaker 2: to do that to those that could reflect and recall
Speaker 2: just about everything that was at the table.
Speaker 1: Meaning that he found that some people were really good
Speaker 1: at imagining their breakfast stable, and some people were just like,
Speaker 1: I don't see anything.
Speaker 2: Really bad at it. And then he sort of characterized
Speaker 2: it in terms of the proportions of people. So let's
Speaker 2: describe how tall people are, and so you might send
Speaker 2: out a survey, Please measure yourself and tell me how
Speaker 2: tall you are. Well, then you would come up with something.
Speaker 2: It would be sort of a normal distribution bell shaped
Speaker 2: curve that people see in statistics, right, And so he
Speaker 2: was doing a similar thing, but doing it towards these
Speaker 2: mental images. And so if you think about the bell
Speaker 2: shaped curve, some have zero ability to visualize or imagine
Speaker 2: and others have an advanced, almost photographic capacity to relate
Speaker 2: the items that were at their breakfast table. And then
Speaker 2: most of the people were sort of in the middle.
Speaker 1: I see, you found there was sort of a range
Speaker 1: of people. It wasn't like some people could, some people couldn't,
Speaker 1: some people were better, some people were okay, and some
Speaker 1: people were worse at it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the idea.
Speaker 1: Now you might be wondering, is this all self reported surveys?
Speaker 1: People could be biased or they could just be making
Speaker 1: stuff up ironically about not being able to imagine things.
Speaker 1: How do we know there are people who really can't
Speaker 1: visualize things? Well, modern science has actually answered this question.
Speaker 1: How did they know it wasn't just subjective?
Speaker 2: Well, if we fast forward to the modern world, people
Speaker 2: do experiments now using brain imagery as something called binocular
Speaker 2: rivalry priming. So that's asking people to picture a certain
Speaker 2: pattern and it creates a stress between your two eyes
Speaker 2: and how your two eyes encode disinformation in your brain.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is kind of an interesting test. It's a
Speaker 1: little debated whether it actually measures how well you can imagine.
Speaker 1: But here's how it works. You wear special goggles and
Speaker 1: you're shown two different images to each of your eyes.
Speaker 1: For example, your right eye sees a red kangaroo and
Speaker 1: your left eye sees a blue zebra. Now, normally your
Speaker 1: brain freaks out a little because each of your eyes
Speaker 1: is seeing something different, but eventually your brain makes the choice.
Speaker 1: You either see the red kangaroo or the blue zebra.
Speaker 1: And typically it's kind of random. Half the time you
Speaker 1: might see the red animal and the other times you
Speaker 1: would see the blue one. But psychologists can do something
Speaker 1: called priming where you're asked to imagine a color right
Speaker 1: before you see the two images. Someone might say to
Speaker 1: you imagine the color red or imagine the color blue,
Speaker 1: and for most people that's enough to tip your brain
Speaker 1: to choose the animal of that color. If you are
Speaker 1: imagining red, your brain will ignore the blue zebra and
Speaker 1: you will see the red kangaroo. But if you're not
Speaker 1: able to imagine images, not even colors, then this has
Speaker 1: no effect on you, and you will randomly see the
Speaker 1: red or blue animal. Another test for avantasia is for
Speaker 1: you to imagine a bright light.
Speaker 2: There's another test as well that we know that it's
Speaker 2: not subjective. Imagined brightness makes most people's pupils constrict a
Speaker 2: little bit.
Speaker 1: Ah, So if.
Speaker 2: You imagine, just imagine a bright light. If you're a
Speaker 2: sided person and you can imagine a bright light, your
Speaker 2: pupils will actually shut down just a little bit, right.
Speaker 2: But people with a fantasia can't do that. Don't do that.
Speaker 1: There are pupils don't move at all. Yes, if I
Speaker 1: ask you to take a second right now and imagine
Speaker 1: seeing a really bright light shining at you, for most people,
Speaker 1: their pupils will automatically close up a little as if
Speaker 1: they were actually seeing a bright light. But if you're
Speaker 1: not able to imagine visual images like that your pupils
Speaker 1: would see the same. Now, there's two interesting things about
Speaker 1: a fantasia. First, he said, there's an opposite characteristic in
Speaker 1: some people called hyper fantasia.
Speaker 2: So there's something called hyper fantasia. If somebody can really
Speaker 2: conjure very grandular mental images with high fidelity, they can
Speaker 2: show richer scene details and stronger coupling between the frontal
Speaker 2: control networks and visual cortex.
Speaker 1: Meaning people who are really really imaginative hyper fantasia. They
Speaker 1: activate more brain areas when they're imaginating than people who
Speaker 1: are not as good at.
Speaker 2: It, or the same areas just more strongly.
Speaker 1: I see. We'll get more into the brain areas that
Speaker 1: are active when you use your imagination later in the program.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting is that this characteristic of either having
Speaker 1: a really vivid visual imagination or not being able to
Speaker 1: visualize things can sort of affect who you are and
Speaker 1: what you end up doing in life.
Speaker 2: There has been some work to characterize how people fall
Speaker 2: into different types of jobs based on their ability to
Speaker 2: form these images or not. And it may surprise you
Speaker 2: that scientists and engineers tend to be on the a
Speaker 2: fantasia side. Really, a lot of what they do is
Speaker 2: in the realm of mathematics and logic and not necessarily
Speaker 2: in the areas related to the formation of images. So
Speaker 2: you know, it's not a universal Yeah, Obviously, people that
Speaker 2: are advanced in their ability to form visual images probably
Speaker 2: are going to be more apt to go to visual
Speaker 2: arts and you know, do things that are more creative.
Speaker 1: Now, you might be wondering at this point, like I was,
Speaker 1: if this means that some people are just born with
Speaker 1: more imagination than others, and if it means you're stuck
Speaker 1: for life to have or not have a lot of imagination.
Speaker 1: Ask doctor Godwin this question, and he asked this with
Speaker 1: two points. The first is that you thinks imagination is
Speaker 1: something you can learn to do better. Now, do you
Speaker 1: think this is something that is learned or some people
Speaker 1: genetically just have a brain that's more imaginative than others.
Speaker 2: I think it's probably both. I would say that, you know,
Speaker 2: you certainly to the table with a certain genetic disposition
Speaker 2: to be able to do something like that. But I
Speaker 2: could also imagine that we can with practice improve our
Speaker 2: ability to imagine things. You know, For example, in the
Speaker 2: exercise that we started with, I asked you to imagine
Speaker 2: an apple, Well, what if I asked you to imagine
Speaker 2: two apples or three apples. You know, in a way,
Speaker 2: you can sort of see how you could build your
Speaker 2: mental muscle, so to speak, and your ability to imagine
Speaker 2: by undertaking certain exercises that would lead you to create
Speaker 2: these images more effectively.
Speaker 1: I see.
Speaker 2: So I'm not saying this as a scientist necessarily. I'm
Speaker 2: just saying that there are a few things that we
Speaker 2: can't improve with practice, and I can imagine that mental
Speaker 2: imagery would be something that could be improved if you
Speaker 2: have the capacity to do it at all.
Speaker 1: And the second answer to this question is that, apparently
Speaker 1: there are many different kinds of imagination. Being able to
Speaker 1: imagine images is just one of them. For example, there's
Speaker 1: the ability to imagine sounds and songs and voices. Some
Speaker 1: people can do that really well, like musicians and composers,
Speaker 1: and some people can't. Not being able to do that
Speaker 1: is called an aurelia. But it goes even deeper than that.
Speaker 2: The other interesting thing about this is just because you
Speaker 2: can't do this doesn't mean you don't have an imagination.
Speaker 2: I think that's an important thing to stay because there
Speaker 2: might be someone out there saying, wow, what are you saying.
Speaker 2: Are you saying that because I can't create a mental image,
Speaker 2: I don't have an imagination. No, I'm not saying that
Speaker 2: at all. So I'll give you one example of that.
Speaker 2: So in our book that you and I wrote together,
Speaker 2: we have the story of Helen Keller.
Speaker 1: Helen Keller, if you're not familiar, lived around the beginning
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. She lost her ability to see
Speaker 1: or hear at a very young age. She was both
Speaker 1: blind and deaf, and yet she became a world famous author, advocate,
Speaker 1: and speaker.
Speaker 2: No one would argue that Helen Keller, who was an
Speaker 2: advanced scholar, did not have an imagination, because she had
Speaker 2: to be able to imagine the world as a result
Speaker 2: of the tactle sensations that she had and her ability
Speaker 2: to sense vibrations and intellectually, she had very complex ideas
Speaker 2: that she was able to express even through her challenges.
Speaker 2: She had to have had some means of constructing a
Speaker 2: version of the world that she could work with.
Speaker 1: I see, sometimes we think that imagination is only imagining images, songs,
Speaker 1: or sounds, but actually imagination maybe goes deeper and can
Speaker 1: include concepts and ideas and different representations of the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there are many ways, even emotions.
Speaker 1: That sets us up for our next segment when we
Speaker 1: come back, we're going to talk to another cognitive scientist
Speaker 1: who has a general theory of imagination and how it
Speaker 1: relates to everything from how we come up with ideas
Speaker 1: to how it helps us make meaning out of life,
Speaker 1: and how it even affects our mental health. So stay
Speaker 1: with us, we'll be right back. Hey, welcome back. We're
Speaker 1: talking about the signs of imagination, and so far we've
Speaker 1: learned that not everyone can imagine the same way. There
Speaker 1: are people with the characteristic of having incredibly vivid imaginations,
Speaker 1: and there are people who can't visualize images, or can't
Speaker 1: imagine sounds or voices or music. Just imagine what it
Speaker 1: would be like to be someone like that, to not
Speaker 1: be able to picture something in your brain, or not
Speaker 1: be able to hum a tune in your head. Their
Speaker 1: way of processing the world is very different from others. Now,
Speaker 1: what's interesting is that I just asked you to imagine
Speaker 1: what it would be like to be such a person,
Speaker 1: and we actually thought about it for a second. You
Speaker 1: used your imagination. In other words, imagination is not just
Speaker 1: visualizing images or hearing sounds in your brain. It's also
Speaker 1: the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes, which
Speaker 1: makes sense of all these different flavors of imagination. I
Speaker 1: reached out to another contractive scientists, doctor Jessica Andrews Hannah,
Speaker 1: a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of Arizona.
Speaker 1: According to doctor Andrews Hannah, imagination is basically the default
Speaker 1: mode that your brain operates it. Well, thank you, doctor
Speaker 1: Andrews Hannah for joining us.
Speaker 3: I'm happy to be here, thanks for reaching out.
Speaker 1: Awesome. So, as you might know, I'm someone who makes
Speaker 1: his living using his imagination, but I've never thought about
Speaker 1: what it is, or how it works or what's happening
Speaker 1: in my brain. So maybe to start us off, can
Speaker 1: you tell us what is imaginating? Like, how do you
Speaker 1: define what it is?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question, particularly because different fields of
Speaker 3: stuffy actually take a slightly different approach. So there, for example,
Speaker 3: is a field of imagination research focusing on our ability
Speaker 3: to engage in creative thought. This idea that I can
Speaker 3: imagine something new and novel that maybe has a particular use,
Speaker 3: you know, that might solve a problem. Right, that's very
Speaker 3: different than other kinds of imagination that have been talked
Speaker 3: about in terms of I can see something an image
Speaker 3: in my head. You know, I'm imagining that I was
Speaker 3: at my tenth birthday party, and I can see it
Speaker 3: clearly as if I'm mentally time traveling to the past,
Speaker 3: and almost as if I'm there right. So those flavors
Speaker 3: of imagination are really highlighting the discrepant ways that people
Speaker 3: might talk about in psychology and neuroscience.
Speaker 1: Here, doctor ANDREWS. Hana is saying that defining imagination is
Speaker 1: tricky because we used to try to describe lots of
Speaker 1: things we do with our brain, from coming up with
Speaker 1: new ideas, to picturing images or sounds in our heads,
Speaker 1: to imagining what someone else might be thinking. If you
Speaker 1: think about it, even remembering a memory from your past
Speaker 1: uses your imagination. You are conjuring up impressions that aren't
Speaker 1: really there. And planning for the future is also using
Speaker 1: your imagination. When you're thinking ahead, you're thinking about and
Speaker 1: envisioning events or scenarios that haven't happened yet. So one
Speaker 1: way to think about imagination is that it's everything your
Speaker 1: brain does when it's not engaging with woods around you. Basically,
Speaker 1: imagination is synonymous with your inner life.
Speaker 3: So the nice thing about adopting this broad cond of
Speaker 3: dictionary definition of imagination is that it's encompassing all the
Speaker 3: different flavors and facets, and it's kind of highlighting that
Speaker 3: what they all have in common is this ability to
Speaker 3: dissociate a bit from our external world and turn our
Speaker 3: thoughts and attention inward.
Speaker 1: I see to sort of like have internal experiences that
Speaker 1: are not directly coming from the outside, and those can
Speaker 1: be things in the past, things we project into the future,
Speaker 1: or even things that maybe don't exist right now. Exactly interesting,
Speaker 1: So it's sort of related to your inner life. Exactly
Speaker 1: what does that mean?
Speaker 3: What is inner life? Our inner mental life includes things
Speaker 3: like our memories, our past experiences, our plans, are kind
Speaker 3: of wondering about what if, our daydreams, and mind wandering.
Speaker 3: So in that sense, people can refer to this as
Speaker 3: perceptually decoupled cognition or internal menation or imagination.
Speaker 1: Essentially, what doctor Andrew s Heina is saying is that
Speaker 1: if you think about it, whatever you're not interacting with
Speaker 1: or paying attention to the things that are happening around you,
Speaker 1: you're basically living inside your head, and to do that,
Speaker 1: you need to make stuff up, and that requires imagination.
Speaker 1: In other words, we all use our imaginations all the time.
Speaker 1: There's no such thing as a person who doesn't have imagination. Next,
Speaker 1: I wanted to know how this all works in your brain.
Speaker 1: So then, what is happening in the brain or what
Speaker 1: does psychologists and neuroscientists understand about what's happening in the
Speaker 1: brain when we use our imagination.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it has most closely been linked to a network
Speaker 3: of brain regions that have collectively been referred to as
Speaker 3: the default mode network. And so this is a very
Speaker 3: interesting set of brain regions that was discovered fairly accidentally
Speaker 3: in the neuroscience literature twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: You said it was sort of discovered accidentally. What does
Speaker 1: that mean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of an interesting reflection of the early
Speaker 3: field of cognitive neuroscience in psychology, where in the early
Speaker 3: nineties we're able to put a person in an MRI
Speaker 3: scanner and kind of record what parts of the brain
Speaker 3: were engaged when people were thinking or seeing. So the
Speaker 3: experiments that were done early on mostly involved visual stimuli
Speaker 3: or maybe auditory stimuli. Cognitive tasks involving our attention to
Speaker 3: our external.
Speaker 1: World, like how do we react to things exactly?
Speaker 3: How do we react, how do we see, how do
Speaker 3: we hear, et cetera. And as we know as scientists,
Speaker 3: you know, if we're going to be measuring the effect
Speaker 3: associated with an experimental condition, we need to be able
Speaker 3: to reference it to a control condition.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's how scientists discovered the brain areas related to imagination.
Speaker 1: When we first started scanning brains in an fMRI machine,
Speaker 1: scientists were mostly interested in how the brain reacted to
Speaker 1: and acted on things in the outside world, but as
Speaker 1: a control to have something to compare to, they would
Speaker 1: ask test subjects to just sit there and do nothing.
Speaker 1: The scientists thought that's what they were getting. They thought
Speaker 1: they were getting signals from the brain when it wasn't
Speaker 1: doing anything. And this went on for years and years.
Speaker 1: But then one day someone realized, wait a minute, maybe
Speaker 1: the brain is not doing nothing.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't until about the late nineteen nineties that
Speaker 3: enough experiments had been conducted that researchers could start to
Speaker 3: look at similarities across the studies. Right, And what professor
Speaker 3: named Marcus Rachel discovered is that there also seemed to
Speaker 3: be a consistent set of brain regions that are more
Speaker 3: engaged when we're passively sitting there. And what researchers kind
Speaker 3: of started to realize is that our mind doesn't shut off.
Speaker 3: It's that your attention is turning inward. And it turns
Speaker 3: out when you ask people what was going through your mind,
Speaker 3: people would say, well, in fact, I was thinking about
Speaker 3: my past, I was planning my future. I was thinking
Speaker 3: about what I would do after the experiment is over.
Speaker 3: I was bored, and so I was coming up with
Speaker 3: a story or something. Those are all often very spontaneous
Speaker 3: forms of imagination.
Speaker 1: Meaning we don't just use our imagination when we're trying
Speaker 1: to imagine things. It's almost like our default mode is
Speaker 1: to use our imagination.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 1: What neuroscientists found was that the brain sort of has
Speaker 1: to modes to it. One is the active mode when
Speaker 1: we're doing things and interacting with the world, and the
Speaker 1: other is the default mode, which is when we let
Speaker 1: our minds wander and daydream. And to wander and daydream
Speaker 1: you need imagination.
Speaker 3: So there is a researcher Nancy Andreasen, and around that
Speaker 3: time she published a study in which she coined the
Speaker 3: acronym rest and rest in her paper, stands for episodic
Speaker 3: silent thought, as it's a resting state, right, isn't it
Speaker 3: a lack of cognition? You're actually engaged in quite a
Speaker 3: lot of cognition. That's what we default to when we're
Speaker 3: otherwise not occupied with, you know, other things.
Speaker 1: That's like the ultimate academic ninja move, Like you come
Speaker 1: up with an acronym that means the opposite of what
Speaker 1: it's it's supposed to be.
Speaker 3: That's like multiple levels of you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what is this network? Like, what are these
Speaker 1: brain regions? Okay, As it turns out, there are brain
Speaker 1: regions that we can associate with this day dreaming, mind
Speaker 1: wandering imagination mode of the brain.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, this default mode network as a
Speaker 3: whole takes up about twenty percent of the whole brain,
Speaker 3: so it's actually a very large network of brain regions
Speaker 3: that are really a representation in all four lobes of
Speaker 3: the brain and the cerebellum. Actually, there's a lot of
Speaker 3: cortical real state dedicated to our ability to engage in imagination,
Speaker 3: and a lot of these regions are on the surface
Speaker 3: of the brain or the cortex, but they also include
Speaker 3: a subcortical representation regions, you know, like the part of
Speaker 3: the basal ganglia and the hippocampus, which we know is
Speaker 3: important for learning and memory. But also there's projections to
Speaker 3: the parietal lobe. There's other projections to other parts of
Speaker 3: the brain as well, the temporal lobe, the frontal cortex,
Speaker 3: the frontal lobe as well. And there's an incredible amount
Speaker 3: of individual variability, Like the position in my brain might
Speaker 3: be slightly different than its position in your brain, so
Speaker 3: our brain representation of imagination that might also relate to
Speaker 3: the idiosyncratic nature of our thoughts.
Speaker 1: In other words, you can see slight differences in this
Speaker 1: brain network between different people, which maybe explains why we
Speaker 1: each have such a unique imagination and way of thinking. Now,
Speaker 1: is it the case that when we're imagining things as
Speaker 1: opposed to processing outside sensory things that I see in here,
Speaker 1: totally different areas light up? Do I have an imaginative
Speaker 1: brain and an external brain?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think the field really hasn't settled on an
Speaker 3: answer there. You know, is it the case that we are,
Speaker 3: in one moment of time, for example, simultaneously attending inward
Speaker 3: and externally or are we maybe very rapidly flipping, and
Speaker 3: then our brain is like changing in very fast, dynamic ways.
Speaker 3: That's a whole other, very very interesting area that we
Speaker 3: don't really know hardly at all about.
Speaker 1: Okay, when we come back, we're going to explore the
Speaker 1: dark side of the signs of imagination and how using
Speaker 1: imagination the wrong way can affect your mental health. Stay
Speaker 1: with us, we'll be right back. Welcome back. We're talking
Speaker 1: about the science of imagination, and we learned some scientists
Speaker 1: see basically everything we do that's not interacting with the
Speaker 1: outside world as an act of imagination. You use your
Speaker 1: imagination to have thoughts and recall memories and plan for
Speaker 1: the future, and to think about how other people are feeling.
Speaker 1: And we talked about how imagination happens in the brain.
Speaker 1: According to scientists, when you imagine things, your frontal lobes
Speaker 1: basically ask the sensory parts of your brain to replay
Speaker 1: sensations and images and sounds. This is why you have
Speaker 1: the sense of experiencing what you imagine. But that signal
Speaker 1: from the frontal lobes is weaker, which is why that
Speaker 1: sense is not as strong as the feeling of experience
Speaker 1: and seeing what's real. Your brain is somehow able to
Speaker 1: tell the difference between imagining something and actually living it.
Speaker 1: At least that's what's supposed to have it.
Speaker 3: We also rely on regions in the hippocampus and other
Speaker 3: regions that might be interfacing with our primary sensory networks
Speaker 3: in our brain that actually may distinguish between what's imagined
Speaker 3: and what is reality in the here and now. And
Speaker 3: then then we get into kind of questions regarding hallucination.
Speaker 3: That process can get mixed up in people who are
Speaker 3: hallucinating with a certain psychoses schizophrenia, for example, people don't
Speaker 3: know whether they're hallucinating or not. They would actually think
Speaker 3: that hallucination's auditory, visual, etc. Are real, Right, So there's
Speaker 3: lots of clinical relevance.
Speaker 1: And that brings us to the dark side of imagination. Yes,
Speaker 1: and people with schizophrenia or people who are drugs, the
Speaker 1: line between imagination and reality can get blurred. You can
Speaker 1: literally be sort of trapped in your imagination. But according
Speaker 1: to doctor Andrews Hannah, this is something that can happen
Speaker 1: to all of us in our daily lives and it
Speaker 1: can affect our mental health. Doctor Andrews Hannah has a
Speaker 1: theory that there are two kinds of imagination in your brain.
Speaker 1: One is called your mind's eye, which is the ability
Speaker 1: to think up images, in memories and sounds. Think of
Speaker 1: it as your ability to play a movie in your head.
Speaker 1: The other kind of imagination, she calls your mind's mind,
Speaker 1: which is when you use your imagination to essentially worry.
Speaker 3: So often people will be rehashing past experiences at a
Speaker 3: very high level and extrapolating and overgeneralizing. You know, I
Speaker 3: had a negative interaction with a colleague, What does this
Speaker 3: mean about my future? What does it mean about me
Speaker 3: as a person? Why do I always act this way?
Speaker 3: Et cetera. Right, that's the process of rumination.
Speaker 1: Doctor Andrews. Hannah thinks need both kinds of imagination, your
Speaker 1: ability to play it moving in your head and your
Speaker 1: ability to rehash and ruminate on experiences, but that you
Speaker 1: can get into trouble, mental trouble if those two get
Speaker 1: out of balance.
Speaker 3: Often people will kind of get stuck on negative past
Speaker 3: experiences and have a hard time pulling themselves away from
Speaker 3: those negative self focused thoughts. And the therapies psychotherapies that
Speaker 3: often work well for folks are therapies that train people
Speaker 3: to think in more of a concrete, detailed self separating way.
Speaker 3: For example, and mindfulness therapies, you are trained to bring
Speaker 3: mindful attention to your thoughts and experiences and really kind
Speaker 3: of be aware of all the details, all the emotions,
Speaker 3: the censory details, both in your external world but also
Speaker 3: in your inner world. And that process of bringing detail
Speaker 3: to a thought actually has this kind of side effect
Speaker 3: of helping you distance yourself from a thought, to be
Speaker 3: able to know that I'm having a negative thought right now,
Speaker 3: but if it is not defining who I am, this is
Speaker 3: a thought that will go away.
Speaker 1: Meaning like some of you get stuck in your mind's mind,
Speaker 1: and to help you get out of that, it helps
Speaker 1: to engage your minds.
Speaker 3: Uh, is that the idea, Yes, that is exactly the idea.
Speaker 3: We need to have this healthy balance, engaging in bold.
Speaker 1: So it's good to have an imagination. It's basically how
Speaker 1: we think about everything in the world. But it can
Speaker 1: also trap you and you can lose balance. And according
Speaker 1: to Sector Andrew's Hanna, it's getting harder and harder to
Speaker 1: find this kind of balance in our lives.
Speaker 3: It's super important. I think there are so many societal
Speaker 3: implications now, particularly because of the accessibility of digital devices
Speaker 3: that we really don't as a society preserve time, create
Speaker 3: time for just letting our minds wander, which we're not
Speaker 3: going to do when we're scrolling on TikTok or whatever
Speaker 3: it is, right, is really important for mental health, but
Speaker 3: also having kids seeing kids develop, right, children develop where
Speaker 3: you know, my kids will go over to their friend's
Speaker 3: house and all their friends will be on smartphones and TikTok.
Speaker 3: I think observing trying to raise kids in a society
Speaker 3: that is sort of built to in many ways do
Speaker 3: everything it can to prevent people from engaging in imagination,
Speaker 3: even at a young age. Right, we buy a toy
Speaker 3: and you know, there's like one way to use a toy.
Speaker 3: You don't have to use your imagination anymore. You just
Speaker 3: follow the instructions.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: There's so many spaces where I think from a very
Speaker 3: early age, we're not fostering the development of imagination from
Speaker 3: a young age. And that is so critical because if
Speaker 3: we can help children be okay with being bored, right,
Speaker 3: boredom is a good state because then you will turn
Speaker 3: and use your imagination to get out of that boredom
Speaker 3: and to kind of be okay with sitting alone with
Speaker 3: your thoughts, then that will make you very resilient, particularly
Speaker 3: for mental health challenges. That when life becomes very stressful,
Speaker 3: you can turn inward to help improve our well being
Speaker 3: rather than make it worse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, meaning like it seems to we're moving towards a
Speaker 1: society that leaves less time to use our imagination.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, less opportunity from a very young age,
Speaker 3: but also especially in Western societies, less opportunity in the workforce.
Speaker 3: You know, we're very success driven. We have to put
Speaker 3: in eighty hour work week, you know, to mean that
Speaker 3: we're successful. That is not good for all of the
Speaker 3: restorative benefits of being alone with our thoughts. We can
Speaker 3: actually get much of our best work done during those moments. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because we're using our imagination. But I also have to
Speaker 3: also remind myself because if I'm walking from one building
Speaker 3: to another, what am I going to do? I'm gonna,
Speaker 3: you know, get on my email and try to address
Speaker 3: a few emails during that two minute a period of time.
Speaker 3: So it's not like, you know, I sort of know
Speaker 3: what's good for you, but it's very hard implementing this well.
Speaker 1: In my own Well. Thank you so much, Dictor Andrews
Speaker 1: Hanna for joining us.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much. This is really fun.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you doctor Godwin, Thank you. I never imagined
Speaker 1: this will go so well.
Speaker 2: I had a vision, my awesome.
Speaker 1: Well imagine that we reached the end of the episode.
Speaker 1: We hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us. See
Speaker 1: you next time You've been listening to Science Stuff. Production
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