Imagination: A Double-Edged Sword
- Eman Yousuf
- 3 hours ago
- 4 min read
We have an extraordinary ability to imagine. Our imagination lets us revisit the past, rehearse the future, create entirely new experiences and worlds... all within our minds. But are we always in control of what we see in our minds?
My name is Eman, I’m a PhD candidate at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at the Imagine Better Lab. My research explores why young people with low mood and depression might experience upsetting images playing in their minds, even when they don’t want them to. Since starting my PhD, I’ve spoken to many young people about their experiences of intrusive images, and their rich experiences of mental imagery have left me with more questions than answers.
What makes our imagination so powerful, and how can we harness this power of imagination?
Well, researchers and research participants in the field of mental imagery are already beginning to unravel these very questions.
Mental Time Travel
What would you do if you could step inside a time machine? Is there a moment in the past you would return to or somewhere in the future you would project yourself forward to? What would you change?
Would you believe me if I told you that time-travelling is something we can already do, and in fact, something many of us do often? But not in the physical world, but rather within our inner mental worlds.
Mental Time Travel was a concept first proposed by Endel Tulving in 1985. It describes our ability to bring past experiences, our memories, back into our minds and re-live them, and to project ourselves forward to the future and pre-live experiences, like rehearsing a conversation in our minds.
As I write this piece, nothing will change before my eyes, but within my mind I can travel back in time to many different places, have conversations with many different people – like my parents, who are halfway across the world – but in my imagination I can see them clearly with my mind’s eye.
The mind’s eye is our ability to generate and experience visual mental imagery in the absence of any direct sensory input. We often think of mental imagery as visual, but the images created in our imagination can be multisensory, encompassing experiences of smell, taste and sound, all without the presence of any external stimuli.
Take a moment here, can you bring to mind the smell of roses? (I only have the experience of a faint smell, neither here nor there, but somewhere). What if I asked you to bring to mind the laughter of someone you love? (I can hear this loud and clear).
Our mental experiences can vary considerably, but we know little about these differences.
It is through this rich inner mental landscape that mental time travel might become possible.
The Real Power of Imagination
Have you ever found yourself lost in a daydream and felt your heart race or noticed your mood shift, even though nothing around you had changed?
Research on the brain suggests that we may experience imagination as if something is happening in the here and now. Your imagination sends signals to the brain similar to those triggered by real perception. We may process mental images experienced internally, in our minds, similar to how we experience external stimuli in the physical world.
Because of this overlap, neuroscientists describe imagination as ‘weak perception.’
This might be one reason why mental imagery can be more emotionally intense than verbal thoughts. When we imagine emotional mental images, we may be activating the same brain areas as if we were experiencing an emotional experience in reality. For example, replaying vivid scenes from a good day yesterday, in your mind, might generate more positive emotions than simply thinking “I had a good day yesterday,” according to research.
A Double-Edged Sword
On one hand, memories which we remember positively can make us feel happy, nostalgic, and loved, and images of the future can fill us with motivation or hope. But on the other hand, memories or images of the future can also be negative, upsetting and distressing.
For some, negative images can become persistent, uncontrollable and intrusive. Often, these images play on repeat, shaping how people see themselves, the world around them and their future. One young person with lived experience described it like the chorus of a song stuck in their head on loop.
Many people think of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) when they think of intrusive memories.
But research suggests both intrusive memories and images of the future may play a role in a range of mental health difficulties. Vivid, emotional, and upsetting mental images that intrude in people’s minds are increasingly recognised as an important, yet poorly understood feature in mental health difficulties such as anxiety and depression.
Someone with depression might be tormented by vivid memories of being bullied and these are experienced as if they are happening in the here and now. Like a time machine, pulling them back to the past whether they want to go or not.
Reimagining Imagination
Researchers are exploring how imagination itself might offer a way forward to reduce the power of intrusive images. One therapeutic approach, Imagery Rescripting, is showing signs of early promise.
Imagery rescripting is an approach which helps people revisit, process and reshape these intrusive images using their imagination. It offers an intervention where a more acceptable or positive outcome is imagined. If the brain really is processing imagination similar to what we experience in reality, then we have reason to think that imagining something can be a powerful experience in itself.
While we can’t rewrite the past, we may be able to rewrite how it exists in our imagination and in doing so, reduce its power.
And so perhaps, William Blake, painter and poet, writing in the 1800s, might have been onto something when he said: “The imagination is not a state, it is the human existence itself.”
