how is the brain able to give us images when we are imagining something?
In: Biology
As far as my humble understanding, our ability to imagine a “future” version of ourselves is evolutionary. Us being able to imagine what may happen to a future us, and understanding it may hurt us later, i.e. eating all of our food now instead of saving some, or taking an unnecessary physical risk, would be detrimental to our survival. So this is a trait we adopted that helped our survival.
As far as the intensity of imagery of our visualization seems to be related to our individual capacity for creativity.
The science on exactly how this happens..🤷🏼♀️
firstly you need to be careful when talking about your brain as being a separate entity that “gives you” something. the brain is both observer and creator when dealing with imaginary images. the distinction between an imaginary and real image is that in the latter, it’s the eyes that supply the image. in the former, it is understandable that imaginary images are not as vivid or detailed as real images, because the brain now has two jobs instead of one.
secondly, brains only become better at something if they are trained for that role.and the fact is that most people are fine going through their entire lives using their brains to process real images from the eyes rather than create imaginary images to enjoy. so it should not be a surprise that people who exercise imaginary image creation a lot are going to be much more skilled at it and excel at professions that involve creative imagery for example. nobody questions the fact that athletes can perform incredible physical motions because they move a lot. untrained talent and full genetic potential are also involved, but… separate topic. if you have ever dreamed in your sleep and saw things in that dream even though your eyes were obviously not working, that’s proof that your brain can create imagery on its own.if you struggle to imagine vivid images while awake, it’s mostly because you never had a reason to train that skill. people born blind don’t dream imagery though..but again..different topic.
all of this is managed by the part of the brain known as the visual cortex. essentially half the surface of your brain is devoted to vision (real or imaginary). it’s really dope.
some people even have (trained or otherwise) developed strong connections with other parts of the brain like say the auditory cortex, and so see [imaginary images when certain sounds are perceived.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia) . there’s also some reports that the visual cortex actually also processes auditory signals. who knows..we are still learning about our brains.
Sorry bub, no-one really knows the answer to this one. And it’s even harder to explain in a simplified way.
If I had to give a response, based on current theories, I’d say that this phenomenon is performed by a part of the brain called the central executive. You can think of this sort of like a cross between an admin assistant and a 911-operator. It tends to do jobs that coordinate brain resources, but it also has roles in filtering/processing incoming information and ensuring the correct brain areas deal with the information/stimuli appropriately. If parts of this system are damaged or congenitally absent, then a person is not able to call up images or contort or change objects in their mind’s eye. So this sorta provides evidence that generating these kinds of visual images is a process that involves multiple parts of the brain working as one – via the central executive.
One theory is that the admin assistant has a little sketchpad by their desk (in the literature it’s literally named the visuo-spatial sketchpad), and based on (1) the information coming in via the senses, (2) your volition (your active desire to do something), and (3) your current emotions at the instant this is all happening, they sketch something down on the pad and that’s the image you see in your mind’s eye.
The important thing to note here is that the assistant doesn’t know what the final image will look like – they’re just sketching a hot-take of some object based on properties sent in via your senses, i.e. your eyes sending in an image that resembles something you’ve seen in the past, or your ears listening to something that sounded similar to something you’ve already heard. So let’s say your friend asks you to imagine a television, your assistant isn’t just going to sketch a Sony XBR 900F. You remember that a television could be a black rectangle, you remember that it could be perhaps thin, and you remember the context of a television (it’s usually inside a house, there are usually pieces of furniture around, it might be on a stand, etc). Importantly, the form and the color of the object is assessed and sketched. Then, some physics is added and simulated. If it’s light, then you might imagine yourself holding it. If you know it to be heavy, then it’s likely situated a few arms lengths from you (and if you were to imagine yourself throwing a tennis ball at the TV, it wouldn’t be knocked over). All of this is sketched roughly on the pad by the assistant (again, not knowing it’s a TV because it doesn’t interpret objects in that way).
Then your emotions add a dash of personality to it – perhaps you were feeling happy the last time you watched TV. So your assistant might add some imagery to it that aims to replicate those emotions (because you know there should be an image but you can’t recall exactly what image was on the screen the last time you saw a TV).
And then with all those inputs combined, the sketch is completed and you see it! There’s a bunch of stuff I left out, but this was getting long haha.
ETA: Here’s something even crazier – none of this really makes sense without considering evolution. Within this framework, it’s reasonable that being able to conjure mental images would be a selected trait from generation to generation. Even in the way I described above. For example, if our ancestors were out hunting and came upon a predator, it’s reasonable that the faster we could interpret the pattern of signals we’re seeing – say, a large black bear, then remember a previous danger, imagine that previous danger in the mind’s eye (color and shape and physics), the better we’d be able to alter our behavior to avoid a bad encounter. And I’m not even getting into the process your brain can use to project/extrapolate your visual perception a few hundred milliseconds into the future to allow you to catch balls! Now THAT is some Matrix-level shit.
In reality, this specific bear might not even be the same species, or it might not even be a bear! But your brain has evolved to keep you alive and it heavily, HEAVILY uses pattern recognition to do that. So with all that in mind, it’s better to prioritize the speed of image construction/imagination in the brain (by the sketchpad), rather than the accuracy of the image.
As they say, I’d rather be wrong and alive than correct and dead 😱.
Fun fact, your brain can also hear as well as see things.
In music we call this Audiation or Aural Image. The ability to sing is directly based on how well someone “hears” notes. This is nearly identical to how well someone can draw based on how well they mentally “see” the thing they’re drawing.
Obviously practice, technique, and experience refine those skills, but it is fascinating.
Source: College Music Theory and Sound Production Professor
Different parts of the brain have different jobs. Some process vision, others process and store memories, etc.
One of the jobs of the prefrontal cortex allows us to imagine scenarios, but it can activate the same vision parts of the brain that we use to process what we see. Because the different areas interact with each other they can cause one area to activate when another one is used. Similar to smells bringing up memories.
I’m not sure exactly how it happens but I can add to the conversation by mentioning that imagination comes in a spectrum. Each person has a different level of “Theater of the Mind”. Some people can perfectly imagine themselves in a field for example, while others close their eyes and only see darkness or random colors. This is called aphantasia, or lack of fantasy, I’m actually at a 0-1 out of 10 in my imagination while most of my friends are 8 or 9. Since I learned about that a year ago its been fun paying attention to what my mind sees in different activities or environments.
Honestly I’m willing to bet that the reason we perceive the world in real time is the same as why we can form imagery in our brain. Instead of the brain using your eyes, ears, nose, and touch, it tries to replicate these senses all in the brain itself. I could be pretty far off as I’m not a scientist but that’s my guess.
People see pictures when imagining things?
I’ve also wondered this, and I’m also curious about why some people cannot see images in their heads. My bf for example can’t do this- he cannot visualize new situations in his head. I wonder why that is
So someone asked this same question about 5 years back. There was a pretty good explanation there from u/michaelhyphenpaul that I’m going to paste below. Something to note would be that 5 years is quite a long time for a field like neuroscience where we’re learning more almost every day, but nothing about their answer seems off to me. Anyways, here it is!
>Going for an explanation a 5 year old might really get:
Part of your brain (the back part) controls vision. When you see a real banana, that part of your brain responds to the light coming into your eyes, and it tells the rest of your brain about what the banana looks like. It says things like “it’s yellow,” “it’s curved,” and “it has a brown spot right in the middle.”
>When you imagine something, the visual part of your brain isn’t responding to the light coming into your eyes. Instead, it’s responding to what you’re thinking about. You remember what a banana looks like, so you can imagine it. The same kind of messages are being sent by the visual part of the brain to other parts (yellow, curved, brown spot). But when you’re imagining, the messages are less clear then when you really SEE a banana. That’s why “it’s there, but it isn’t there.”
>But, this is really a good thing. Think about this: what would happen if you COULD really see something when you imagined it? Every time you imagined a tiger, you’d see a tiger appear in the room! That would be bad; you’d probably run around screaming and being scared a lot. So your brain has evolved a way to let you imagine things without being confused whether or not you’re really seeing them.
>OK, bonus ELI-25 time: There’s a really cool study that came out recently, which looked at exactly this question. They used functional MRI to examine how responses in the visual cortex differ when people saw a set of 5 familiar paintings, versus when they imagined them. They found similar (but for the sake of simplicity, messier) response patterns during imagery versus perception, even in the lowest levels of visual cortex, suggesting that imagining a picture activates these parts of the brain in a similar way to actually seeing it.
>Here’s a link to the paper: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811914008428
>In the interest of full disclosure, I’m friends and colleagues with some of the authors, and I was around when they were working on this project (was finishing my PhD in neuroscience at the time), though I wasn’t directly involved in their work.
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