Imagination

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For other uses, see Imagination (disambiguation).

Olin Levi Warner, Imagination (1896). Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington, D.C.

Imagination, also called the faculty of imagining, is the ability to form new images and sensations in the mind that are not perceived through senses such as sight, hearing, or other senses. Imagination helps make knowledge applicable in solving problems and is fundamental to integrating experience and the learning process.^[1][2][3][4] A basic training for imagination is listening to storytelling (narrative),^[1][5] in which the exactness of the chosen words is the fundamental factor to "evoke worlds".^[6] It is a whole cycle of image formation or any sensation which may be described as "hidden" as it takes place without anyone else's knowledge.^{[citation needed]} A person may imagine according to his mood, it may be good or bad depending on the situation. Some people imagine in a state of tension or gloominess in order to calm themselves. It is accepted as the innate ability and process of inventing partial or complete personal realms within the mind from elements derived from sense perceptions of the shared world.^{[citation needed]} The term is technically used in psychology for the process of reviving in the mind, percepts of objects formerly given in sense perception. Since this use of the term conflicts with that of ordinary language, some psychologists have preferred to describe this process as "imaging" or "imagery" or to speak of it as "reproductive" as opposed to "productive" or "constructive" imagination. Imagined images are seen with the "mind's eye".
Imagination can also be expressed through stories such as fairy tales or fantasies. Children often use such narratives and pretend play in order to exercise their imaginations. When children develop fantasy they play at two levels: first, they use role playing to act out what they have developed with their imagination, and at the second level they play again with their make-believe situation by acting as if what they have developed is an actual reality that already exists in narrative myth.^{[7][vague][further explanation needed]}

Contents

 [hide] 

• 1 Description
• 2 Psychology of imagination
• 3 Imagination and memory
• 4 Imagination and perception
• 5 Imagination vs. belief
• 6 Brain activation
• 7 Imagination as a reality
• 8 See also
• 9 References
• 10 Further reading
• 11 External links

Description[edit]

The common use of the term is for the process of forming new images in the mind that have not been previously experienced with the help of what has been seen, heard, or felt before, or at least only partially or in different combinations. Some typical examples follow:

• Fairy tale
• Fiction
• A form of verisimilitude often invoked in fantasy and science fiction invites readers to pretend such stories are true by referring to objects of the mind such as fictional books or years that do not exist apart from an imaginary world.

Imagination, not being limited to the acquisition of exact knowledge by the requirements of practical necessity is largely free from objective restraints. The ability to imagine one's self in another person's place is very important to social relations and understanding. Albert Einstein said, "Imagination ... is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."^[8]
In various spheres, however, even imagination is in practice limited: thus a person whose imaginations do violence to the elementary laws of thought, or to the necessary principles of practical possibility, or to the reasonable probabilities of a given case is usually regarded by mental health professionals as insane.
The same limitations beset imagination in the field of scientific hypothesis. Progress in scientific research is due largely to provisional explanations which are developed by imagination, but such hypotheses must be framed in relation to previously ascertained facts and in accordance with the principles of the particular science.
Imagination is an experimental partition of the mind used to develop theories and ideas based on functions. Taking objects from real perceptions, the imagination uses complex IF-functions^{[citation needed]} to develop new or revised ideas. This part of the mind is vital to developing better and easier ways to accomplish old and new tasks. These experimental ideas can be safely conducted inside a virtual world and then, if the idea is probable and the function is true, the idea can be actualized in reality. Imagination is the key to new development of the mind and can be shared with others, progressing collectively.
Regarding the volunteer effort, imagination can be classified as:

• voluntary (the dream from the sleep, the daydream)
• involuntary (the reproductive imagination, the creative imagination, the dream of perspective)

Psychology of imagination[edit]

Psychologists have studied imaginative thought, not only in its exotic form of creativity and artistic expression but also in its mundane form of everyday imagination.^[9] Ruth M.J. Byrne has proposed that everyday imaginative thoughts about counterfactual alternatives to reality may be based on the same cognitive processes on which rational thoughts are also based.^[10] Children can engage in the creation of imaginative alternatives to reality from their very early years.^[11]

Imagination and memory[edit]

Memory and imagination have been shown to be affected by one another.^[12] "Images made by functional magnetic resonance imaging technology show that remembering and imagining sends blood to identical parts of the brain."^[12] An optimal balance of intrinsic, extraneous, and germane forms^{[clarification needed]} of information processing can heighten the chance of the brain to retain information as long term memories, rather than short term memories. This is significant because experiences stored as long term memories are easier to be recalled, as they are ingrained deeper in the mind. Each of these forms require information to be taught in a specific manner so as to use various regions of the brain when being processed.^[13] This information can potentially help develop programs for young students to cultivate or further enhance their creative abilities from a young age. The neocortex and thalamus are responsible for controlling the brain's imagination, along with many of the brain's other functions such as consciousness and abstract thought.^[14] Since imagination involves many different brain functions, such as emotions, memory, thoughts, etc., portions of the brain where multiple functions occur—such as the thalamus and neocortex—are the main regions where imaginative processing has been documented.^[15] The understanding of how memory and imagination are linked in the brain, paves the way to better understand one's ability to link significant past experiences with their imagination.

Imagination and perception[edit]

Piaget posited that perceptions depend on the world view of a person. The world view is the result of arranging perceptions into existing imagery by imagination. Piaget cites the example of a child saying that the moon is following her when she walks around the village at night. Like this, perceptions are integrated into the world view to make sense. Imagination is needed to make sense of perceptions.^[16]

Imagination vs. belief[edit]

Imagination is different from belief because the subject understands that what is personally invented by the mind does not necessarily affect the course of action taken in the apparently shared world, while beliefs are part of what one holds as truths about both the shared and personal worlds. The play of imagination, apart from the obvious limitations (e.g. of avoiding explicit self-contradiction), is conditioned only by the general trend of the mind at a given moment. Belief, on the other hand, is immediately related to practical activity: it is perfectly possible to imagine oneself a millionaire, but unless one believes it one does not, therefore, act as such. Belief endeavors to conform to the subject's experienced conditions or faith in the possibility of those conditions; whereas imagination as such is specifically free. The dividing line between imagination and belief varies widely in different stages of technological development. Thus in more extreme cases, someone from a primitive culture who ill frames an ideal reconstruction of the causes of his illness, and attributes it to the hostile magic of an enemy based on faith and tradition rather than science. In ignorance of the science of pathology the subject is satisfied with this explanation, and actually believes in it, sometimes to the point of death, due to what is known as the nocebo effect.
It follows that the learned distinction between imagination and belief depends in practice on religion, tradition, and culture.

Brain activation[edit]

A study using fMRI while subjects were asked to imagine precise visual figures, to mentally disassemble them, or mentally blend them, showed activity in the occipital, frontoparietal, posterior parietal, precuneus, and dorsolateral prefrontal regions of the subject's brains.^[17]

Imagination as a reality[edit]

The world as experienced is an interpretation of data arriving from the senses; as such, it is perceived as real by contrast to most thoughts and imaginings. Users of hallucinogenic drugs are said to have a heightened imagination. This difference is only one of degree and can be altered by several historic causes, namely changes to brain chemistry, hypnosis or other altered states of consciousness, meditation, many hallucinogenic drugs, and electricity applied directly to specific parts of the brain. The difference between imagined and perceived reality can be proven by psychosis. Many mental illnesses can be attributed to this inability to distinguish between the sensed and the internally created worlds. Some cultures and traditions even view the apparently shared world as an illusion of the mind as with the Buddhist maya, or go to the opposite extreme and accept the imagined and dreamed realms as of equal validity to the apparently shared world as the Australian Aborigines do with their concept of dreamtime.
Imagination, because of having freedom from external limitations, can often become a source of real pleasure and unnecessary suffering. Consistent with this idea, imagining pleasurable and fearful events is found to engage emotional circuits involved in emotional perception and experience.^[18] A person of vivid imagination often suffers acutely from the imagined perils besetting friends, relatives, or even strangers such as celebrities. Also crippling fear can result from taking an imagined painful future too seriously.
Imagination can also produce some symptoms of real illnesses. In some cases, they can seem so "real" that specific physical manifestations occur such as rashes and bruises appearing on the skin, as though imagination had passed into belief or the events imagined were actually in progress. See, for example, psychosomatic illness and folie a deux.
It has also been proposed that the whole of human cognition is based upon imagination. That is, nothing that is perceived is purely observation but all is a blend between sense and imagination.

See also[edit]

Thinking portal

• Art
• Creativity
• Fictional countries
• Idea
• Imagination inflation
• Intuition (psychology)
• Mimesis
• Sociological imagination
• Truth

References[edit]

1. ^ Jump up to: ^{a b} Norman 2000 pp. 1-2
2. Jump up ^ Brian Sutton-Smith 1988, p. 22
3. Jump up ^ Archibald MacLeish 1970, p. 887
4. Jump up ^ Kieran Egan 1992, pp. 50
5. Jump up ^ Northrop Frye 1963, p. 49
6. Jump up ^ As noted by Giovanni Pascoli
7. Jump up ^ Laurence Goldman (1998). Child's play: myth, mimesis and make-believe. Basically what this means is that the children use their make-believe situation and act as if what they are acting out is from a reality that already exists even though they have made it up. Berg Publishers. ISBN 1-85973-918-0. 
8. Jump up ^ Viereck, George Sylvester (October 26, 1929). "What life means to Einstein: an interview". The Saturday Evening Post. 
9. Jump up ^ Ward, T.B., Smith, S.M, & Vaid, J. (1997). Creative thought. Washington DC: APA
10. Jump up ^ Byrne, R.M.J. (2005). The Rational Imagination: How People Create Alternatives to Reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
11. Jump up ^ Harris, P. (2000). The work of the imagination. London: Blackwell.
12. ^ Jump up to: ^{a b} Long, Priscilla (2011). My Brain On My Mind. p. 27. ISBN 1612301363. 
13. Jump up ^ Leahy, Wayne; John Sweller (5 June 2007). "The Imagination Effect Increases with an Increased Intrinsic Cognitive Load". Applied Cognitive Psychology 22: 275. doi:10.1002/acp.1373. 
14. Jump up ^ "Welcome to Brain Health and Puzzles!". Retrieved 2011-03-05. 
15. Jump up ^ "Welcome to ScienceForums.Net!". 
16. Jump up ^ Piaget, J. (1967). The child's conception of the world. (J. & A. Tomlinson, Trans.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. BF721 .P5 1967X
17. Jump up ^ Alexander Schlegel, Peter J. Kohler, Sergey V. Fogelson, Prescott Alexander, Dedeepya Konuthula, and Peter Ulric Tse (Sep 16, 2013) Network structure and dynamics of the mental workspace PNAS early edition
18. Jump up ^ Costa, VD, Lang, PJ, Sabatinelli, D, Bradley MM, and Versace, F (2010). "Emotional imagery: Assessing pleasure and arousal in the brain's reward circuitry". Human Brain Mapping 31 (9): 1446–1457. doi:10.1002/hbm.20948. PMID 20127869. 

Further reading[edit]

• Byrne, R.M.J. (2005). The Rational Imagination: How People Create Alternatives to Reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
• Egan, Kieran (1992). Imagination in Teaching and Learning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Fabiani, Paolo .The Philosophy of the Imagination in Vico and Malebranche, F.U.P. (Florence UP), English edition 2009. PDF

• Frye, N. (1963). The Educated Imagination. Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
• Norman, Ron (2000) Cultivating Imagination in Adult Education Proceedings of the 41st Annual Adult Education Research.
• Salazar, Noel B. (2011). The power of imagination in transnational mobilities. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 18(6):576-598.
• Sutton-Smith, Brian. (1988). In Search of the Imagination. In K. Egan and D. Nadaner (Eds.), Imagination and Education. New York, Teachers College Press.

See also:

• Watkins, Mary: "Waking Dreams" [Harper Colophon Books, 1976] and "Invisible Guests - The Development of Imaginal Dialogues" [The Analytic Press, 1986]
• Moss, Robert: "The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination" [New World Library, September 10, 2007]
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

Three philosophers for whom imagination is a central concept are Kendall Walton, John Sallis and Richard Kearney. See in particular:

• Kendall Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts. Harvard University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-674-57603-9 (pbk.).
• John Sallis, Force of Imagination: The Sense of the Elemental (2000)
• John Sallis, Spacings-Of Reason and Imagination. In Texts of Kant, Fichte, Hegel (1987)
• Richard Kearney, The Wake of Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (1988); 1st Paperback Edition- (ISBN 0-8166-1714-7)
• Richard Kearney, "Poetics of Imagining: Modern to Post-modern." Fordham University Press (1998)

External links[edit]

Look up imagination in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: imagination

Wikisource has the text of the 1905 New International Encyclopedia article Imagination.

• Imagination on In Our Time at the BBC. (listen now)
• Imagination, Mental Imagery, Consciousness, and Cognition: Scientific, Philosophical and Historical Approaches
• Two-Factor Imagination Scale at the Open Directory Project

[hide] v t e Mental processes Cognition Awareness Cognitive dissonance Comprehension Consciousness Imagination Intuition Perception Amodal Haptic (touch) Sound pitch harmonics speech Social Perception as interpretation Visual Color RGB model Depth Form Memory Encoding Storage Recall Consolidation Other Attention Higher nervous activity Intention Learning Mental fatigue Mental set Thinking Volition

Inside the Strange New World of DIY Brain Stimulation

• BY GREG MILLER  
 
• 05.05.14  |  
 
• 6:30 AM  |  
 WIRED   

• 
  

 Ward Sutton

When Brent Williams got to RadioShack that day in the spring of 2012, he knew exactly what he was looking for: a variable resistor, a current regulator, a circuit board, and a 9-volt battery. The total came to around $20. Williams is tall and balding, with wire-rim glasses that make him look like an engineer, which he is. He directs a center on technology in education at Kennesaw State University and is the kind of guy who spends his free time chatting up people on his ham radio or trying to glimpse a passing comet with his telescope. But this project was different.

When he got home, he took his supplies into his office. He heated up his soldering iron, hoping his wife wouldn’t see what he was up to. He fished a few wires out of his desk and built a simple circuit. Using alligator clips, he connected the circuit to two kitchen sponges soaked in saline and strapped them to his head with a sweatband. He positioned one sponge just above his right eyebrow and the other up high on the left side of his forehead. Then he snapped the battery into place, turned a small dial, and sent an electric current into his brain.

Turn the red knob to adjust the current flowing to your brain.  Gregory Miller

It’s been nearly two years since Williams cobbled together his first device, and he has been electrifying his brain two to three times a week ever since. Often he does it for about 25 minutes in the evening while reading on the couch. Sometimes it’s while he’s doing laundry or other chores. It’s become just another part of his routine, like brushing his teeth.

Williams got the idea from a news story about how Air Force researchers were studying whether brain stimulation could cut pilot training time. The military is not alone in thinking that brain zapping may improve mental function. In recent years, the method—technically known as transcranial direct current stimulation—has caught the interest of academic researchers. British neuroscientists have claimed it can make people better at learning math. A team at Harvard has found promise for depression and chronic pain. Others are looking into using it to treat tinnitus and eating disorders and to speed up stroke recovery. Hundreds of papers have been published, and clinical trials are under way.

Though these are still early days for the research—many of the studies are small and the effects modest—it has inspired largely enthusiastic media coverage (“the electric thinking cap that makes you cleverer … and happier!” one British newspaper gushed) and spawned a community of DIY brain zappers.

Williams is one of its leaders. The treatments have made a huge difference in his life, he says. He retains more information from the tedious journal articles he has to read for work, and he feels more creative. On his blog, SpeakWisdom, he posts technically detailed reviews of stimulation devices and cheerfully gives advice to anyone considering trying it for the first time. He’s got lots of company. Asubreddit devoted to the practice has nearly 4,000 subscribers who actively follow the scientific research and share tips on where to place the electrodes on your head if, say, you’re depressed, too impulsive, or just want to amp up your creativity.

Williams is spreading the brain-zapping idea closer to home too. He has built brain stimulators for his wife (he couldn’t keep the secret very long) and several friends and acquaintances. All in all, he has persuaded at least a dozen people to give it a try. One says she’s gone off antidepressants for the first time in 20 years. Another says brain stimulation is helping him get his ADD under control. Several ambitious middle-­aged professionals say the devices have boosted their memory and focus.

 Gregory Miller

Entrepreneurs are starting to get in on the action. A company called foc.us has already planted a flag with a commercial brain-stimulation headset released last year. It’s marketed as a gadget for videogamers looking to improve their skills, thus skirting the need for FDA approval. The first batch of 3,000 sold out in just a few months. So did the second.

With easy access to the research, the equipment, and each other, self-experimenters aren’t consulting their doctors or waiting for scientific consensus. They’re zapping first and asking questions as they go.

In October I meet some of Williams’ converts at a barbecue he is hosting with his wife, Madge, at their four-­bedroom house in a quiet neighborhood of mature trees and well-tended lawns outside Atlanta. The first to arrive are Tom and Susan Tillery, a couple in their midfifties bearing a plate of brownies. While Brent tends the grill and Susan helps Madge in the kitchen, I ask Tom what kind of results he is noticing from the brain stimulation. He compares it to a runner’s high: not euphoria but a sense of wellness and calm. He assures me he’s not just doing it to achieve inner peace, though. “I’m doing it to be better at life,” he says. It’s not like electrotherapy will turn any dumb schmuck into an intellectual superstar, he says, but it puts you closer to the top of whatever game you’ve got.

Susan tried it first. She’d heard about it from Madge, who’d been stimulating her brain to improve her memory. Madge, who likes to memorize scripture, says the stimulation has improved her retention dramatically. Susan admits she was skeptical at first, but she was impressed to find out that researchers at Harvard were looking into it. “I was so intrigued,” Susan tells me. She decided to see what it could do for her. The Tillerys own a busy financial planning firm with offices in four states, and she figured she could use some extra focus.

 Ward Sutton

She started stimulating her brain a few times a week. “I put it on while I’m reading the Bible, so it goes by quickly,” she says. It gave her greater mental clarity. “It just kind of took the fogginess away.”

It’s a rare thing for a scientist to stand up in front of a roomful of his peers and rip apart a study from his own lab. But that’s exactly what Vincent Walsh did in September at a symposium on brain stimulation at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain. Walsh is a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London, and his lab has done some of the studies that first made a splash in the media. One, published in Current Biology in 2010, found that brain stimulation enhanced people’s ability to learn a new number system based on made-up symbols.

Only it didn’t really.

“It doesn’t show what we said it shows; it doesn’t show what people think it shows,” Walsh said before launching into a dissection of his paper’s flaws. They ranged from the technical (guesswork about whether parts of the brain are being excited or inhibited) to the practical (a modest effect with questionable impact on any actual learning outside the lab). When he finished this devastating critique, he tore into two more studies from other high-profile labs. And the problems aren’t limited to these few papers, Walsh said, they’re endemic in this whole subfield of neuroscience.

 Ward Sutton

Another crucial issue is how to rule out placebo effects. Though the current flowing through the brain during stimulation is almost imperceptible (it’s about a thousand times less than what’s used in electroconvulsive therapy), a slight tingling sensation under the electrodes can be a giveaway. Scientists are still grappling with the best way to deal with that.

A previous speaker had shown a slide with a curve illustrating the typical hype cycle for new technology. It starts with a steep rise to the “peak of inflated expectations,” then plunges into the “trough of disillusionment,” before finally reaching a “plateau of productivity.” Researchers at the meeting seemed to agree that brain stimulation was somewhere near the peak, and Walsh said the sooner they turn the corner the better. “It would do the field a service if we took a head dive into that trough of disillusionment and swam around in it for a while,” he said. There was nervous laughter in the audience. The DIY crowd, meanwhile, puts scientists in an awkward position. On one hand, the researchers genuinely believe the technique has potential. Some of them have filed for patents and started companies. For both selfish and scientific reasons, they don’t want the self-experimenters ruining it for everyone by getting hurt or creating an aura of kookiness around the thing.

Still, they’re reluctant to condemn the tinkerers outright. “You have to respect people’s autonomy,” says Roy Hamilton, a neurologist at the University of Pennsylvania. Hamilton and his colleagues have even considered making a safety video aimed at the DIY crowd. “We’ve talked at some length about whether that would be a socially responsible thing for clinicians to do.” They still haven’t decided.

 Ward Sutton

Before I leave Atlanta I visit James Fugedy, a physicianwho offers brain stimulation treatment at his small office. Fugedy is 65, with salt-and-pepper hair, a mustache, and glasses that give him a slightly owlish appearance. He electrifies his own brain several times a week and says he appreciates the boost it has given his memory.

Fugedy may be the only doctor in the country who trains people to stimulate their own brains and sends them home with a kit. In a way, he represents a narrow middle ground between the scientific establishment and the DIY community. Patients willing to pony up $2,400 get a four-hour consultation in his office, medical-grade equipment, and follow-ups by Fugedy, usually via Skype.

The day I visit, he has arranged for two of his patients to stop by. Hellen Owens has been coming to Fugedy for nine years, driving an hour and a half from her home in rural Bremen, Georgia. Dressed head to toe in burgundy velour, she rocks slowly back and forth on Fugedy’s examination table as we talk, gently massaging one hand with the other. At 57, she has suffered chronic pain that she attributes to fibromyalgia. Her previous doctor gave her epidural injections that helped for 20 minutes or so before the agony returned. “It was like my bones were going to explode,” she says. Brain stimulation hasn’t cured her, not nearly. But she’s convinced she’d be bedridden without it.

The other patient, Deborah Ellis, says brain stimulation has relieved her chronic pain—doctors also diagnosed her with fibromyalgia—and the depression that came with it. “I no longer spend every day thinking I don’t want to live,” she says.

It’s impossible not to sympathize with them. It’s also impossible to know what’s really going on. Placebo effects can be strong for depression and pain conditions, but Fugedy says it’s not in his patients’ minds. He has treated more than 300 people with overwhelmingly positive results, though he acknowledges that those results are just anecdotal. It’s the research that’s made him a believer.

It was basically the same thing I’d heard from the Williamses and their friends. They all trusted the scientific data, even if the scientists weren’t entirely convinced by it themselves. They felt it worked for them, and they’ve seen it work for their friends. They’re convinced it would work for others if they would only give it a try.

When I’d visited Brent Williams the day before, he told me he’d recently gotten an email from a psychiatrist in Los Angeles who was interested in trying brain stimulation with some of his patients. Williams was fantasizing a bit about the possibility that some Hollywood celebrity might use it and talk to Oprah or do an interview with People magazine and tell the world about it. That, he says, would be awesome.

As he was talking he plucked several sponges from a glass of saline solution he keeps on the kitchen counter. He popped them into his foc.us headset and put it on. He tapped a button at the back of his head and the device buzzed to indicate it was working. I watched his face closely. He didn’t twitch or blink or even stop talking for a second, but the current was flowing through his brain.