How are we able to visualize our thoughts?
In: Biology
We know that during abstract thinking the frontal neocortex is actively engaged, what it is doing from a mechanical/electrical perspective is something science is still figuring out. The ability to form abstract thoughts is the keystone of being able to ‘visualize’ and visualization is fundamentally linked to the ability to process language. We can actually *see* letters in our brain because of an interesting feature of our brain called the ‘letter box’ which is not in Broca’s area as some people mention. It is further back in the brain near the visual cortex, which may explain why the human brain is adept at ‘visualizing’ things. Operating and interpreting signals from the eyes is a very energy and resource intensive task, so the letter box can be thought of in simple terms as a re-use of brain circuits typically used for regular sight, but over the evolutionary span are now used for recognizing letters the moment you see them. If you are familiar with de-coding offload (where a signal is decoded in an actual circuit rather than with software) it is similar to that idea.
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