HSCI-330: Neuroscience of Imagination

Seeing, visualizing, and dreaming are closely related: they are all perceptual experiences. In this course we will explore what is known about visual imagination (visualizing), as the neurological mechanisms of visual imagination offer a foundation for comparing it to other visual experiences. As often in neurology, we can learn from brain scan and brain lesion studies, allowing for examination of both normal visualizing and its disorders. Psychological studies investigate the role of visualizing and like other forms of imagination in cognition; as visualizing is a private experience, we will look at phenomenological analyses and compare them with our own first-person knowledge. Finally, we will explore what happens when we externalize visualizing in the forms of sketching, drawing, or painting.