How are we able to sit in a chair, and imagine a little bear dancing there. How can we imagine voices and sounds and songs, but not really listen to them?
What is the scientific explanation, what parts of the cerbrum are involved?

There is a blurry line between actually seeing an object an imaging it. Whats the difference? You can imagine all your heart out to see a flying banana-cat in your kitchen, but it's like your seeing them not with your eyes, but with something else. I really need an explanation, how we are able to imagine and manipulate our senses.

Also when one hallucinates naturally or from drugs, are they just imagining the sounds and visions, or are the retina and cochlea actually producing them?

The human brain is so mysterious I don't think we have an answer to this and I don't think we ever will have an answer to this.

As for the hallucinations, I know that's related to dopamine and serotonin, but I don't know much else.

Our neurons record images and sounds, which we can remember and "play" in our minds whenever we want. It's the exact thing as hearing a car and recognizing the sound, but it's controlled by yourself.

It's a simple brain activity. Well, basically its remembering, the objects are not there, and the eyes and ears do not actually pick them up, it's straight from the brain.

But the brain can also produce thing it's never seen/heard/felt/smelled before.
Like how schizophrenic people can hear voice that are completely new to them.

If i where you, I'd stop "needing an explanation", this is all about how the brain works and as far I I know it's not figured out completely, let alone, describable.

It isn't discovered entirely, of course, but basically this would be creation. Creation can't be explained in a few sentences. It's a whole process based on what the brain has seen/heard/felt before. A mix of memories creates another "memory".

Memory works in three stages, sensory, short term and long term. Your sensory memory is made up of all the information that your brain has received within the last few seconds. If it is not paid attention to it will be erased almost instantly and replaced with new information. Anything which you consciously notice then passes into the short term memory where it is stored for about eight seconds. You can hold between five and nine (depending on the individual) bits of information in the STM. If you repeat something to yourself (possibly sub-consciously) it will remain in the STM long enough to be fully encrypted into a chemical trace at which point it will be stored in the long term memory.

To make this simpler and to speed up the encoding process involved in LTM storage the brain simplifies what it sees into basic schemas. If you were to remember the room that you are sitting in now, for instance, you would not remember it exactly, you would have remembered generalisations of the room which will be called back later and combined with other memories, for example I am now sitting in a room with blue walls. If I remember the room, I do not think of the room as it is (unless I properly concentrate on filling in the gaps but that is done seperately as well), I remember the shortened schema, "blue walls" and from that my brain will then go to a different part of my LTM and pick out the schema for "wall" and the schema for "blue" and combine the two.

When you imagine something, what you are doing is creating a temporary false memory of something by combining the necessary schemas - ie. bear + brown fur + this room + [apply to dance routine].

It is possible to imagine things so vividly that they feel like genuine memories. This is especially prevelant under hypnosis. There have been countless occaisions where psychoanalysts trying to follow Freud's methods (which have been shown to be counter productive) have revealed apparently surpressed memories of child abuse which never really happened at all, causing often quite damaging accusations and people being punished wrongly. I have a friend who can vividly remember having hidden behind a tree at his Aunt's wedding and watched the party from a distance. The Aunt was married two years before he was born.

When you get drug induced halucinations it isn't being produced by your eyes, it's in the part of the brain responsible for decoding visual messages, the occtipital lobe. I suspect it is almost certainly a lack of control of the imagination function described above and it seems real in the same way as false memories do, it's just closer to the present time then the memories usually are.

Conclusion: Cognitive, biological psychology ftw. It's fun to know this stuff. It's just a shame that most of the people who choose to study psychology only do it because it seems like an easy option so they don't pay attention. Most of the people who are actually any good at science go off and study physics and chemistry.

The brain can produce many things, but it isn't so realistic. If you think you're watching TV, it's not so entertaining.



How can we imagine things that aren't there ?
Take drugs.

Quote from Zed

Memory works in three stages, sensory, short term and long term. Your sensory memory is made up of all the information that your brain has received within the last few seconds. If it is not paid attention to it will be erased almost instantly and replaced with new information. Anything which you consciously notice then passes into the short term memory where it is stored for about eight seconds. You can hold between five and nine (depending on the individual) bits of information in the STM. If you repeat something to yourself (possibly sub-consciously) it will remain in the STM long enough to be fully encrypted into a chemical trace at which point it will be stored in the long term memory.

To make this simpler and to speed up the encoding process involved in LTM storage the brain simplifies what it sees into basic schemas. If you were to remember the room that you are sitting in now, for instance, you would not remember it exactly, you would have remembered generalisations of the room which will be called back later and combined with other memories, for example I am now sitting in a room with blue walls. If I remember the room, I do not think of the room as it is (unless I properly concentrate on filling in the gaps but that is done seperately as well), I remember the shortened schema, "blue walls" and from that my brain will then go to a different part of my LTM and pick out the schema for "wall" and the schema for "blue" and combine the two.

When you imagine something, what you are doing is creating a temporary false memory of something by combining the necessary schemas - ie. bear + brown fur + this room + [apply to dance routine].

It is possible to imagine things so vividly that they feel like genuine memories. This is especially prevelant under hypnosis. There have been countless occaisions where psychoanalysts trying to follow Freud's methods (which have been shown to be counter productive) have revealed apparently surpressed memories of child abuse which never really happened at all, causing often quite damaging accusations and people being punished wrongly. I have a friend who can vividly remember having hidden behind a tree at his Aunt's wedding and watched the party from a distance. The Aunt was married two years before he was born.

When you get drug induced halucinations it isn't being produced by your eyes, it's in the part of the brain responsible for decoding visual messages, the occtipital lobe. I suspect it is almost certainly a lack of control of the imagination function described above and it seems real in the same way as false memories do, it's just closer to the present time then the memories usually are.

Conclusion: Cognitive, biological psychology ftw. It's fun to know this stuff. It's just a shame that most of the people who choose to study psychology only do it because it seems like an easy option so they don't pay attention. Most of the people who are actually any good at science go off and study physics and chemistry.

You're something like man with IQ 200, or whatever.

or someone that can use the internet resourcefully.

Maybe. I don't care.

Quote from Menma

You're something like man with IQ 200, or whatever.

144

Quote from Automaton

or someone that can use the internet resourcefully.

Learned in a psychology course. Like I say, it's a shame most of the intelligent people go for chemistry etc. and psychology ends up with the people who sleep all lesson. It's a really fun and useful subject if you can get your head around it.

Course you can think things up which are not there or do not exist, as the brain passing compilations of things it has seen into a totally new object, sound, situation. It all really does revolve around memory.

Some of you really nedd to stop making stuff up.

The images that you see with your eyes are in the back of your brain, the occipital lobe. Those images can be stored in the temperal lob which is under the cerebrum or above your ear and you can just imagin.

Drugs usually either have hormones that stimulate these activities or stimulate the hormone secretion to these avtivities.

Now Zed, how are we able to "play" these recordings? Also when we do why can't we not actually see them.

I'm just a curious child. I am quite educated, but I am learning different things in class. We were studying the structure of the brain and how basic neurons function, and thus I got questions.

I want to take a psychology course. It's really ****ing interesting.