Imagination brings color to our life, but what brings the imagination to our minds?
“Imagination is this wonderful ability that most of us possess,” said Dr. Ajaz Sheikh, a neurologist at the ProMedica Neurosciences Center. “[It] allows us to travel through space and time and experience various places, foods, objects, emotions, etc. It's what most people would see as a mind's eye. You know, the other term for this is mental imagery, which is really key to imagination.”
What parts of the brain are responsible?
Many parts of the brain govern imagery, Dr. Sheikh explained, including the frontal lobe, but more specifically an area of the frontal lobe called dorsolateral prefrontal cortex which connects to another area of the brain called the medial temporal region.
The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is primarily responsible for functions like task switching, planning, and working memory, according to the National Library of Medicine.
The hippocampus and amygdala are both a part of the medial temporal region, and according to Johnson & Wales University, the hippocampus is charged with storing and retrieving memories, whereas the amygdala is responsible for processing emotions. Together, these parts help the brain to form ideas, ultimately contributing to the imagination itself.
“Imagining is often colored by one’s mood. If somebody's feeling good, imagination can be positive, and if they're feeling down or depressed, their imaginations will often be colored by that effect at that particular time,” he said. “And certainly, motivations are driven by our desires and often to imaginative thinking. So, emotions at the same time will serve as a background to the imaginative landscape.”
When is the imagination most fertile?
Childhood is considered a crucial time for imagination to blossom, Dr. Sheikh explained, because of novel experiences during this time.
“[Children are] rapidly exposed to a lot of new experiences, and there is pretty much no societal or ego inhibition at that age,” he said. “I would say that is a very fertile time for imagination to develop.”
Imagination does continue in a tempered form throughout aging, the neurologist said, with social and ego inhibitions altering the imagination.
At Imagination Station, Sloan Eberly Mann, its chief education officer said that imagination is embedded in everything they do at the science center.
“I’m on the bandwagon [that] imagination is more important than knowledge,” she said. “I think for kids, it plays a really critical role in development and it fosters curiosity and creativity. It really allows kids to develop not only cognitively, but their social skills as well.”
Imagination and problem solving
The imagination involves many different regions of the brain – and one area is the parietal cortex, Dr. Sheikh said, which is the area of the brain responsible for providing the spatial coordinates, or background imagination.
“Depending on what you're trying to think about or solve, then this area of the brain will help you with flexibility of thinking,” he said. “If you're trying to think about a mathematical problem, and you're trying to solve that in three dimensions, you know, thinking about that problem and then providing that coordinates with the background from this particular area of the brain, the parietal cortex can definitely help you with the mental flexibility and getting to the solution for that particular problem.”
Ms. Mann said that the programming done at Imagination Station – from inquiry based learning to engineering design challenges – leads to a plethora of problem solving, especially when there isn’t just one way to get to a solution.
“Kids really have to think creatively. They have to use their imagination to develop solutions to a problem,” she said. “Science in general, and for us at Imagination Station specifically, have moved away from like, you know ... step-by-step engagement with science. Like when you move on to step two. Now, it's like, here's the challenge. How are you going to solve it? And that really allows for some neat opportunities for kids to problem solve.”
Imagination and dreaming
When it comes to dreaming, imagination does come into play.
“Most of the dreams that we can recall happened during a particular stage of sleep called rapid eye movement sleep or REM sleep,” the neurologist said. “And these dreams are typically very well formed. They have a certain narrative, although the narrative may be discontinuous or sometimes fuzzy. There's a certain flow to the dreams and they can be often recalled in the morning. The imagination, on the other hand, happens mostly in the daytime. And we can call it daydreaming.”
Daydreaming is something that Ms. Mann finds important, she said, especially to foster creativity in times of boredom.
“When I was a kid, I was bored a lot. I remember, looking out the window and just thinking about whatever my mind was gonna go,” she said. “But not being afraid to have a canvas of like, ‘I'm so bored right now,’ Okay. Cool. ‘Well, like what are you gonna do?’ Grab some crayons, go grab some paper, allowing that opportunity to daydream, explore, and think.”
Dreams are largely automatic, and associated with emotions like fear, anxiety, or joy, Dr. Sheikh said, whereas the imagination can be controlled rather easily and is often devoid of that much emotion.
“Interestingly, dreams have access to certain memories that are buried in the subconscious mind,” he continued. “So, they're practically out of reach for our conscious mind for most time, except during the dreams, and hence these suppressed memories may be extra expressed in the dreams, but they won't be able to come out during voluntary imagination.”
Dr. Sheikh stated that Sigmund Freud, the Austrian neurologist who founded psychoanalysis, discovered that some dreams give us the chance to engage in vivid hallucinations.
‘Wish Fulfillment [are] things that we want it to happen, but they will never have. Dreams are a place where they could be fulfilled,” Dr. Sheikh said. “Dream cognitions often allow us to make connections between otherwise unconnected concepts. The mind will not see any connection between those concepts. This ability to kind of connect between unrelated concepts is thought to promote creativity.”
Rare cases
Aphantasia is a condition that Dr. Sheikh said affects a small minority of people, causing them to not be able to generate mental imagery.
When certain areas of the brain are damaged that are responsible for imagination, Dr. Sheikh said that the patient may lose the ability to imagine completely.
“Some people may have it more subtle and they may help reduce the ability to imagine and imagination is important for, you know, planning and problem solving. So they may experience difficulties in those spheres of life,” he said. “Similarly, people who have a lack of imagination may also have a lack of dreams. And although we don't know exactly what the role of dreams is, it's proposed that dreams are actually important for regulating mood and regulating memory.”
On the opposite end of the spectrum, people can have extra vivid imagery, which could be voluntary or involuntary.
These extreme imaginations can be associated with neurological problems, like Parkinson’s disease, he said, or psychiatric disorders like PTSD, depression, and anxiety.
“Voluntary imagination could be something that we do at will. It's almost like daydreaming about, you know, going on a vacation with friends,” the neurologist said. “But involuntary measures, may be sometimes pathological or problematic. For example, you might see it in people with PTSD. They have flashbacks of traumatic events. These are imaginations that they don't want to have, but they still have and can be a problem.”
The imagination is a powerful tool that is still not completely understood by experts, but the more we imagine, the closer we are to finding the answer to life’s uncertainties.
First Published February 11, 2024, 5:00 a.m.
