Imagination

[caffeine]

I think there has been topics like this before but slightly different...

 

I'm trying to find the main area of the brain that is linked to imagination. What I mean by that is, our everyday life style e.g. places we go / designs we see (clothing of shops etc.) / and even thinking of Heaven, looking at flowers and maybe even also occasions like Halloween. Our general visual perspective.

 

As I have read that the occipital lobe is an area that affects our sleep / dream state. Also the Thalamus relating to visual interpretation and consciousness. But I am trying to pin point very specifically ! As above, people are either grounded in vivid reality or very imaginative with their visual surroundings.

 

Can anyone help find what does this ?

[iNow]

But I am trying to pin point very specifically

There is no "one specific point." The brain is not that simple. There is activation in the occipital lobe as you mentioned (that relates to vision), and often the prefrontal cortex (which relates to higher reasoning and abstraction), and after that activation will be related to the subject of the imagination... whether it's activation in the motor cortex, the emotional centers, memory, or whatever else. It's a complex dance of many different parts. However, if it's a very visual imagination material, then you are correct and a large portion of the activation will be in the occipital lobe.

[caffeine]

There is no "one specific point." The brain is not that simple. There is activation in the occipital lobe as you mentioned (that relates to vision), and often the prefrontal cortex (which relates to higher reasoning and abstraction), and after that activation will be related to the subject of the imagination... whether it's activation in the motor cortex, the emotional centers, memory, or whatever else. It's a complex dance of many different parts. However, if it's a very visual imagination material, then you are correct and a large portion of the activation will be in the occipital lobe.

 

I guess mainly the imagination cognition in the Prefrontal Cortex is decisive, based on next step interaction, which is in relativity to a persons surroundings but is mainly localized to the area of the head where the decisions of the surroundings takes place ? The Occipital lobe as related to the processing of vision, gathers the information and processes a persons surroundings itself. Which is near enough what I'm trying to focus to, but still there could be alternatives. I guess the best example is thinking of Heaven & the beauty of flowers, when life is dull everything around also looks dull but on a brighter side of life there is highlighted beauty all around.

 

I hope that makes sense

[iNow]

Indeed. When we see or smell an amazing flower, or a magnificent aurora borealis, and then call those things to mind and it makes us smile... Usually that is much more strongly related to our memory and emotion centers... toward the center of our brains in the amygdala and hippocampus. These are often referred to as the "reptilian brain" since they have been largely the same in animals since the time of reptiles (the outer cortex and more modern stuff came later, but these parts remain).

 

Even then, however... Even when the memory and emotional centers are highly active... and even when the vision center is processing certain sights and landscapes... or beds of flowers or endless forests or crashing waves... There is still activation in many of the other parts, too. I know it's not a very satisfying answer, but one really cannot often point to a spot in the brain and say, "That's where imagination happens." The concept of imagination itself is far too rich and robust for such a simple and crude answer.

 

An exception that comes to mind, however, is what became known as the "god spot." When this area was stimulated with a current or magnetic field, people report consistently a "sense of oneness" with the universe and a connection with all things... and almost religious or spiritual experience. It's all in the brain, that much is certain, but the experience can be profound. The location for that is the mesiobasal temporal lobe.

[caffeine]

Indeed. When we see or smell an amazing flower, or a magnificent aurora borealis, and then call those things to mind and it makes us smile... Usually that is much more strongly related to our memory and emotion centers... toward the center of our brains in the amygdala and hippocampus. These are often referred to as the "reptilian brain" since they have been largely the same in animals since the time of reptiles (the outer cortex and more modern stuff came later, but these parts remain).

 

Even then, however... Even when the memory and emotional centers are highly active... and even when the vision center is processing certain sights and landscapes... or beds of flowers or endless forests or crashing waves... There is still activation in many of the other parts, too. I know it's not a very satisfying answer, but one really cannot often point to a spot in the brain and say, "That's where imagination happens." The concept of imagination itself is far too rich and robust for such a simple and crude answer.

 

An exception that comes to mind, however, is what became known as the "god spot." When this area was stimulated with a current or magnetic field, people report consistently a "sense of oneness" with the universe and a connection with all things... and almost religious or spiritual experience. It's all in the brain, that much is certain, but the experience can be profound. The location for that is the mesiobasal temporal lobe.

 

I'm not referring, to the "reptilian brain", Olfaction / Emotion etc., none of the stimulated senses. I know there are different comprehensions of the brain, when do tasks such as Art / Poetry etc. etc. and I'm not meaning a detailed analyses of surroundings either.

 

 

With the "God spot", are you referring to the area just above the left Temporal lobe ?, when stimulated can cause an experience of elevation and slight outer body experiences.

 

When I mention feelings or the temporary comprehension of an existence such as heaven, I will try and summarize... As I have mentioned on a dull day / a dull point in life, there is no as such glow or radiant beauty of a persons surroundings, as opposed to e.g. after meditation or something that stimulates the senses but the senses themselves being arbitrary, there is radiant beauty of life in general. I'm referring mostly to the attachment of imagination to the immediate surroundings. For example visiting an old place of a treasured memory, the mind maps out the memories around the person's location.

[iNow]

I read this article today that reminded me of your thread.

 

 

http://neurosciencenews.com/source-creativity-right-left-hemisphere-brain-fmri/

USC researchers are working to pin down the exact source of creativity in the brain and have found that the left hemisphere of your brain, thought to be the logic and math portion, actually plays a critical role in creative thinking.

“We want to know how does creativity work in the brain?” said Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, assistant professor of neuroscience at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

 

If you paint or sculpt, you may think of yourself as right-brained. The right hemisphere of your brain often is thought to be the creative half, while the left is thought to be the rational, logical side.

 

But a new study from a team led by Aziz-Zadeh demonstrated that while the right half of your brain performs the bulk of the heavy lifting when you’re being creative, it does call for help from the left half of your noggin.

 

The study, which focuses on how the brain tackles visual creative tasks, supports previous findings about how the brain handles musical improvisation. <continue reading>

[caffeine]

Thanks, I shall read it !