Artists, writers, actors and directors differ from other people in their ability to use those parts of the brain on which the work of "imagination" depends. Researchers at the University of New Hampshire seem to be able to understand what happens when we let our imaginations run wild and what limits our ability to imagine situations that are far from us.
Children as young as five make fictional friends, teenagers try to imagine what their sweetheart would look like, and adults plan to be successful at work, buy a house, or travel the world. Imagination is an ability that we all possess and use in our daily life. But when we try to imagine a situation that will be far from our reality in terms of time and space - maybe the world in 2500, or what life will be on the Moon or Mars - we often face difficulties trying to visualize such kind of scripts.
For decades, neuroscientists and psychologists have tried to understand what exactly happens in our brains when we let our imaginations run wild, and what limits the ability of many of us to imagine distant situations. In a new study published last month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers indicate that creative workers appear to be the best at overcoming thought problems and gaining access to the peripheral.. remote from itself, imagination. And this quality of theirs can probably be partially explained by the fact that they are able to connect to that part of the brain to which only they have access.
Using the dorsomedial part of what scientists call the "default" or "default network" of the brain, creative people are able to extend their imaginations into the more distant future, in the field, to various kinds of options and hypothetical realities. This default network consists of a group of interconnected areas of the brain, including the medial prefrontal cortex, the angular gyrus, and the hippocampus. These parts of the brain communicate with each other when we dream, when we remember something, or when we think about other people's intentions. Previously published literature suggests that these sites may be used in a person's attempt to envision the future.
Scientists believe that some of these sections of default networks can help us use our experience when we imagine a situation close to us in time and space. So, for example, we can imagine the sights and smells of the cafe we visited recently, and do this just as we think about another place that we will start visiting next week. However, creative professionals turn on other default subsystems when they try to imagine more distant scenarios that cannot be reconstructed by juxtaposing different emerging memories. Take writers, for example. "They imagine the point of view of another person within the landscape, which is not the immediate reality of the writer himself,"- notes Meghan Meyer, one of the main authors of the published study, assistant professor of psychology and science of intelligence at the research university Dartmouth College (Dartmouth College).
To understand why creative workers are able to visualize distant or hypothetical realities so vividly, Meyer and her colleagues conducted a series of three experiments. First of all, they asked 300 randomly selected participants in the experiment to imagine what our planet would look like in 500 years, what a world in which continents did not break apart, and what life would be like if lived by an evil dictator. In addition, participants in the experiment were asked to think of as many ways to use a fountain pen or to improve a megaphone. Those who received high marks for creativity were the best at using distal imagination.
The researchers then repeated these tests with 100 participants who demonstrated some degree of experience in the use of creativity - writers, actors, directors and artists with awards in their fields. They also asked members of a similar group made up of equally successful financiers, lawyers and doctors to answer the same questions. Creative workers have outdone their rivals in written responses and in their own stories about how vividly they can imagine a situation in their imaginations.
Meyer and her team members offered this explanation: perhaps creative people simply have stronger "imagination muscles", just as baseball players have stronger arms (they constantly shoot) than non-athletes. To see these imaginative muscles in action, the organizers asked 27 creative workers and 26 control participants to perform imitation tasks while lying in a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine. Brain activity in creative workers and in the control group was the same when trying to imagine the events of the next 24 hours, however, to the surprise of the researchers,only the creative team connected the dorsomedial default network in an attempt to envision events in the more distant future.
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As it turned out, the dorsomedial default network was not used at all by representatives of the control group. However, this network was turned on even at a time when representatives of the creative professions were resting. “This is a big step forward in understanding how the creative mind works,” says Roger Beaty, a psychologist at Penn State University who was not involved in the experiment. “The results obtained allow us to look at how the human brain creates visual images of various situations, and what distinguishes creative workers when trying to imagine pictures of the distant future,” he notes.
The results obtained will also affect the way we imagine other people. Since the dorsomedial default network connects the moment we try to imagine something significantly different from our own experience, people who are able to activate this network can have great empathy and the ability to imagine how public policy will affect future generations, Daniel Schacter emphasizes Daniel Schacter, a psychologist at Harvard University who was not involved in the experiment.
According to Schacter, the next big question is: Is it possible to use training to improve the activation of the dorsomedial default network? If it is an influencing ability, perhaps drawing lessons or something similar will enhance our imaginations and also help us to better connect with other people.
Knvul Sheikh