Researchers Identify Where, in Brain, Imagination Comes From

It's an age-old truism that the complexity of the brain leaves us hopelessly in the dark about the mechanics behind it.

Phineas Gage, a 19th century railroad construction foreman, lost a large part of his frontal lobe when a metal crowbar pierced his head and came out the other side, but still lived for 12 years.  Because of the brain's malleability, functions are picked up and dropped by different regions as neural networks are routed and rerouted.

Now, in keeping with that idea, researchers at Dartmouth believe they're unlocking the key to understanding imagination, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences.

That study, entitled  "Network structure and dynamics of the mental workspace," reported upon by online blog Medical Xpress, posits that the brain needs to create a "mental workspace", consisting of vast neural network across various regions, all firing off at once.  Thus far, scientists have been unable to locate the singular location in the brain where imagination takes place.

"Our findings move us closer to understanding how the organization of our brains sets us apart from other species and provides such a rich internal playground for us to think freely and creatively," says lead author Alex Schlegel , a graduate student in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. "Understanding these differences will give us insight into where human creativity comes from and possibly allow us to recreate those same creative processes in machines."

In the study, researchers took 15 participants, and - hooking them up to MRI readings - were asked to imagine specific abstract shapes, then to rearrange them into new shapes and figures. According to their readings, researchers found that the participants had activity across twelve different regions of the brain, including both the left and right hemispheres, much in keeping with the presented hypothesis.