What's the science behind imagination?

Factual Questions
1

I was perusing this thread, and it got me to thinking about how imagining or envisioning certain things actually works.

Most of the people I know tend to close their eyes when they want to imagine something clearly, but I know that it isn’t actually necessary to have my eyes closed. For example, I can sit here and type this and still be able to “view” my grandmother’s house where I grew up without actually obstructing my vision in any way, although I believe I tend to lose some visual focus when I do this.

So what’s actually happening? What is my brain doing when I am imagining something? It doesn’t appear to involve my eyes in any way, but does using my imagination actually affect the part of my brain that handles vision, or is it something else altogether? Why is it easier for me to imagine things more clearly with my eyes closed?

2

Interesting question, and it 's worthy of a bump

3

As I recall, it does indeed seem to involve the area of brain you use to see; and if you imagine using a tool, you use the area of the brain involved in that form of manipulation. There’s even been some experiments done in recognizing what you are imagining by scanning the brain’s surface, although last I read it was very limited. More has been done with animals, but humans don’t like to have permanent windows installed in their heads so it slows things down a tad.

4

One last bump.

Thanks for the responses so far - Der Trihs, do you recall where you read about that?

5

I’ve been reading books lately on the history of science. Several of them have mentioned that the “science of thought and memory” is poorly understood.

6

I’ve heard something like Der Trihs. The upshot of it being that imagining using a particular skill has an effect similar to actually practising that skill for real.

7

I really should be able to tell a bit more about this, as I’m about to recommend you read Antonio Damasio’s wonderfull triology (Descartes’ Error, The Feeling of What Happens and Looking for Spinoza), but it’s among the hardest parts of them to understand, and not really the one I’m reading the books for. But anyway, if you’re interested, look it up. I’d actually recommend the books for everyone, but I suppose they’re easier to understand if you have at least some grasp of neuroanatomy.