What is imagination?
- Often described as: Creativity in general
- Sensory like experiences based on internal rather than external imagination (To distinguish it from perception)
how frequently do people think of the future?
- People think about the future every ~16 minutes
- Humans are the only ones that can do this
How do we know we use memories to make imaginations?
People who have trouble remembering (e.g., the elderly, Alzheimer’s patients) also have trouble imagining the future
-Many of the same brain areas are active for both tasks (the “default network”- when you have free time or brain energy your brain thinks about the future)
What is imagining the future like?
- Future imaginings have less detail, and are more prototypical ( prototypical birthday party: balloons, clowns, kids etc. But birthday parties may be a bunch of guys going to the bar for drinks)
- Impact bias: we think that future emotional reactions are stronger than they really will be. This is true even for imagined past events! (imagining how great a beach vacation will be not factoring in the bad things, so disappointment occurs. Same for bad events, being fired don’t factor in the potential benefits)
- Imagine the steps to achieve a goal, not the achievement of it.
What are the different kinds of sensory imagination?
- Visual
- Auditory
- Olfactory/ gustatory
- Haptic
- Emotional (reflect on what you do when you get angry, but this actually makes people angry)
- Enteric/ sexual/ hunger, etc.
- Motor/ Kinesthetic (athletes do this, practice a move in their head)
Imagination vs. mental imagery
- Aphantasics have no conscious experience of sensory imagination. But is it right to say them have no imagination at all?
- Dreaming about somebody who looks like someone else but you “know” is your mother.
- You can imagine things without seeing or hearing them, you can imagine being jealous but you cant see this or hear this (no facial expression for jealousy or imagine owning land and then not owning land nothing changes)
what is the final, optional stage of imagination?
- Mental imagery
- congenital blindness has no visual imagery
what evidence shows that long term memories are not pictures?
- Degraded memories are not blurred or pixelated
- Almost nobody has a photographic memory, our minds create a memory based on facts we remember.
- Attack formation” on a chess board is nota visual property
- We can retrieve based on word queries ( e.g., remember the last cat you saw)
- Missing objects are not blank spaces in our memories, we just forget they are there. This proves that they are not pictures.
- Memories get stored as symbols that form pictures and that is imagination, but they fade really quickly. We need it to do that because otherwise it would disrupt our vision.
How do hallucinations differ from imagination
-Often involuntary (though sometimes imagination is also involuntary as in post-traumatic stress disorder)
-Often believed (though not always)
Often “projected” on the real world (though imagination can do this too, as with imaginary companions, and sometimes hallucinations track the eyes)
what is the relationship between schizophrenia and hallucination?
- Almost all (hospitalized) schizophrenics hear hallucinatory voices
- So do about a third of non-schizophrenics, but with schizophrenia they’re often threatening, jeering or persecuting.
- Delusions and hallucinations (Delusion is a far fetched belief about the world that is hard to shake)
- Difficult to disbelieve
What are hallucinogenic drugs?
- LSD, Hashish, Mescaline, Artane, psilocybin mushrooms
- Multi sensory and meaning rich, often pleasant
- Sometimes believed
what is epilepsy?
- Depending on where in the brain seizures happen, different hallucinatory effects will result
- If higher brain levels (parietal and temporal lobes) one might have cartoony figures
- At even higher levels, one might hallucinate a complete hallucinatory world
- At lower levels you just get simple things like spinning lights
What is charles bonnet syndrome?
- Only visual
- Most people hallucinate shapes, colors or patterns, but never people or objects
- More complex: faces, notation, music or text
- More complex: costumed people marching around
- Never interactive, never familiar,never emotional, never meaningful
- Problem V1 and V2, low level visual brain areas
- Usually not believed
- Do not lead to delusions
- We can get many CBS symptoms from sensory deprivation
What brain areas are imagination and hallucinations associated with?
- Imagination has more activation in the frontal areas associated with executive control.
- Hallucinations originate elsewhere.
- The part of the visual system that is impaired predicts what kinds of hallucinations you will have
What kinds of hallucinations can migraines predict?
- Migraine auras are hallucinations that can accompany migraine headaches.
- Often they start as one thing and turn into another—such as zigzag lines into checkerboard patterns.
- It tracks the progress across the brain.
What is daydreaming and how often do people do it?
- Thinking about things unrelated to your current task
- People mindwander about 47% of the time (Lovemaking seems to be the only activity that people don’t daydream during)
- People are happier when thinking about what they are doing even if the task isnt fun
- Pilots daydream when they have nothing to do
What is maladaptive daydreaming?
- Intense, compulsive daydreaming that interferes with one’s life
- People get grumpy if they cant daydream
- Might go on for many hours
- Do it way too often, cant focus in real life
What are counterfactuals?
- In general, thinking about how your life could be worse (downward counterfactuals) make you feel better, and vice versa
- But not always- downward counterfactuals that make you think “that you could have been me” makes you anxious and scared
- It depends on whether you feel a part of the imagined situation, or contrast your life with it
How can imagination be used as mental training?
- People who imagined putting the ball in the hole putted 30.4% better
- Imagining doing sports makes you better at sports
- (imagine doing finger exercises) Finger strength could be increased by 22% which is almost as much as doing isometric exercise, which increased strength by only 30%
- 20 minutes is the optimal amount of time for mental practice. Less and it doesn’t stick and More and you lose too much touch with feedback from reality
How does imagination fight bias?
- Imagining fighting the bystander effect helped people fight the bystander effect
- Imaging people doing something counter to their stereotype reduces prejudice
How do imagination and diets interact?
Imagining eating a food habituates you to it and you end up actually eating less of it
What are imaginary companions?
Hard to differentiate from toys imbued with “life”
Are imaginary companions common?
- 65% of children under 7
- 28% of 16 year olds
are imaginary companions harmful?
- Though they might be caused by other problems, the imaginary friend themselves are not the problem
- Often it’s helping, not hurting
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Lecture 1: learning, Memory and Representation32
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Lecture 2: perception23
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Lecture 3: the fields that compose cognitive science36
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Lecture 4: Cognitive science & school18
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Lecture 5: the cognitive level16
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Lecture: Language and communication22
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Lecture: Cognitive Development24
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Lecture: Cognitive Science in films3
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Lecture: Evolutionary Psychology22
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Lecture: Morality15
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Lecture: cognitive Biases28
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Lecture: Dreaming22
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Lecture: Cognitive Myths16
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Lecture: Religion14
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Lecture: Imagination27
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Lecture: Consciousness12
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Lecture: Social Cognitive Science and the Evolution of Intelligence13
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Lecture: Cognitive Science and the real world10
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Lecture: The Cognitive Science of Music32
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Lecture: The History, Present and Future of Cognitive Science18
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Lecture: Why Cognitive Science is the Most Important Thing in the World14
