Curious Kids is a show for youths of all ages. If you may have an issue you'd like an authority to reply, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.
Why can some people visualize scenarios of their minds with colours and details and others cannot? – Luiza, 14 years old, Goiânia, Brazil
Imagine you’re at a soccer match and the rating is tied. Both teams are starting the penalty shootout. The crowd goes wild and whether your team wins the match or not depends upon your ability to hit the shot. As you picture this scene, are you able to picture it in colours and details?
Scientists are hard at work try to grasp why some people can imagine such scenarios more easily than others. Even the identical person can imagine things higher or worse at different times.
As a neuroscientist within the fields of Physiotherapy And psychologyLet's take into consideration how people use mental imagery. Here's what researchers know to date.
The brain and the imagination
Mental images is the flexibility to visualise things and scenarios in a single's mind without actual physical input.
For example, once you consider your best friends, it’s possible you’ll routinely picture their faces without actually seeing them in front of you. When you dream of an upcoming vacation, it’s possible you’ll see yourself on a sunny beach.
If you dream of taking a penalty, you would possibly imagine it as should you were watching a video of it. You might even smell the pitch or hear the sounds of the fans.
Scientists imagine that your primary visual cortexpositioned behind your brain, is involved in inner visualizationThis is similar a part of the brain that processes visual information from the eyes and lets you see the world around you.
Coxer via Wikimedia Commons
Another brain region positioned on the very front of the brain also contributes to mental imagery. This structure, the prefrontal cortex, is answerable for Executive functions – a bunch of high-level mental skills that enable you to pay attention, plan, organize, and think logically.
The National Institute of Mental Health via Wikimedia Commons
Scientists have discovered Such abilities are no less than partly related to the flexibility for mental imagery. If someone is sweet at retaining and processing large amounts of knowledge in memory, that person may find a way to play with things like numbers or pictures of their head while on the go.
Experience and remember
Most of the identical brain areas are energetic each while you’re actually experiencing an event and once you visualize it from a memory in your mind. For example, once you have a look at the great thing about the Grand Canyon, your brain creates a memory of the image. But this memory shouldn’t be simply stored in a single place within the brain. It is created when Thousands of brain cells in numerous parts of the brain fire together. Later, when a sound, smell, or image triggers the memory, this network of brain cells fires together again, and you may picture the Grand Canyon in your mind as clearly as if it were right in front of you.
Benefits of mental imagery
The ability to mentally visualize will be helpful.
Koki Nagahama/Getty Images Sports via Getty Images
Notice the concentrated expression on a gymnast's face before a contest. The athlete might be imagining himself performing an ideal ring routine in his mind. This visualization prompts the identical brain regions as once they perform physically within the rings, strengthen their self-confidence and prepare your brain for more success.
Athletes can use visualization to assist them learn skills faster and with less physical strain. Engineers and mechanics can use visualization to repair or design things.
Mental visualization may also help people relearn tips on how to move their bodies after a brain injury. However, with additional practice, those that don’t use visualization will eventually catch up.
Interactions between plant and environment
All shouldn’t be lost if you may have difficulty visualizing. It is feasible that the flexibility to visualise in your mind is a combined effect of each the way in which your individual brain works and your life experiences.
Taxi drivers in London, for instance, should navigate very complicated streets and, as scientists have found, experience changes of their brain structures over the course of their careers. In particular, they develop larger hippocampusa brain structure related to memory. Scientists imagine that the training the taxi drivers went through – having to assume a map of complex streets across London as they drove each day – improved their ability to visualise the brain through changes of their hippocampus.
And watching another person perform a physical motion prompts the identical areas of the brain as creating your individual mental imagery. When you should do something, watching a video of another person doing it could possibly be just as helpful as Visualize it in your headEven if you may have difficulty with mental visualization, you may still profit from it.
Hey, curious kids! Do you may have an issue you'd like an authority to reply? Ask an adult to send your query to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and town you reside in.
And since curiosity knows no age limit, adults can take part too. Let us know what interests you. We can't answer every query, but we'll do our greatest.
image credit : theconversation.com