“The power of imagination” is a popular phrase. It refers to the ability of the human mind to think without limitation. I found a short, animated TED Talk that discusses this superpower. I want you, for a second, to imagine a lion dancing down the street. Chances are you have never seen such a sight, however, more than likely you were able to imagine it. How then do our minds come up with detailed pictures and scenes such as that?
This same ability is the basis of lucid dreams where you know that you are dreaming and have full control. We can easily create everything from realistic everyday scenarios to fantastical fiction inside our brains. Of course, regular dreams use this power too, but lucid dreams are a good example of the extent to which we can use it.
To answer the question of how we are able to do this, let’s go back to our dancing lion on street. We can treat this situation as a puzzle. One that has a few different parts. A list of the basic ones would be a lion, a street, and some dance moves.
In the talk, Andrey Vyshedskiy explains that every time you look at an object, neurons in your posterior cortex fire off. These signals note the characteristics of the object: its color, size, shape, etc. All the neurons that fire build connections with each other creating what is called a neuronal ensemble. After that every time, you think of or look at an object, the neuronal ensemble fires off in unison giving you a clear image of that object.
However, there is not a neuronal ensemble for everything, say, for example, the king of the beasts doing the worm down Main Street. So like assembling a puzzle, your brain, through the prefrontal cortex, the coordinator of many advanced cognitive functions, sends a signal through pathways called neural fibers to the various neuronal ensembles for a lion, steps of a dance, and some street. The brain can time this by regulating the amount of myelin, an insulator, to change the speed of these signals so that they arrive and fire the ensembles at just the right time. This is called the Mental Synthesis Theory.
In other words, with the prefrontal cortex as a conductor, neural fibers as its baton, and individual ensembles ready to fire, we get a symphony. A symphony of an overgrown cat doing the moonwalk down Abbey Road.
Autism Aid 