The Eye's Mind - a study of the neural basis of visual imagination and its role in culture

想象力无疑是使我们成为人类的东西之一。它让我们逃离此时此地，进入过去和未来，进入他人的思想，进入原子的中心和外层空间。它使我们能够设想未实现的可能性，有时，使它们成为现实。我们的“视觉化”能力，即“用心灵的眼睛”看待事物的能力，是我们想象能力的关键部分。这个项目将汇集科学和艺术的研究人员，以增加我们对视觉想象力的了解。我们将集中在三个相关的研究领域。首先，我们将系统地审视大量研究，这些研究考察了我们想象时大脑中发生了什么，并在先前研究的各种结果中寻找一致的模式，这些结果有时相互矛盾。我们将警惕这些模式可能意味着视觉想象的使用，从白日梦到艺术创作。第二，我们将回顾艺术家、艺术学生、哲学家和其他人在这种思想开始以来的2500年里提出的见解和理论。我们会问，这些洞见和理论对想象科学提出了什么样的问题，最后，我们会研究那些视觉意象处于生动性光谱极端的个体。一小部分健康的人，也许是百分之二或三，完全缺乏视觉想象力。这一现象已被反复确认，但从未仔细研究过。我们将招募30名这样的人，并将他们与30名在视觉艺术家的工作中不断使用图像的人进行比较。我们将对两组成员进行访谈，以了解视觉表象的缺乏或丰富如何影响他们的经验和日常生活;我们将使用大脑成像技术和心理测试，以了解更多关于想象能力正常变化的原因和后果。追求这些问题将需要一个团队，包括一个艺术史学家，一个心理学家，一个神经学家，一个哲学家和一个艺术家定期开会，交换意见和计划的工作。我们将招聘一位年轻的研究员作为该项目的研究员。我们希望他或她将有艺术背景和科学的兴趣。我们将在项目的生命周期内举办三次研讨会，这将使所有参与的研究人员和越来越多的合作者为这项工作做出贡献。最后的研讨会将是一个更大的会议，我们将向该领域的专家和感兴趣的公众报告项目的结果。我们将在会议期间举办两场公开讲座，旨在广泛访问。我们将在项目开始时创建一个网站，随着我们的进展不断更新，提供有关项目及其调查结果的易于理解的信息，并为公众提供参与的机会。总而言之，该项目将联合那些通常彼此孤立工作的研究人员，研究我们独特的人类想象能力。它将突出我们的经验，脑科学和艺术之间的联系，它将揭示我们在“视觉”能力上的巨大差异。它将为进一步的工作铺平道路，例如，与澳大利亚人权委员会的另一个项目“重新思考感官”合作，在其他感官的图像方面;在神经和精神疾病方面，如抑郁症，这可能会减少想象力;在如何补救和如何提高正常主体对视觉想象力的使用方面。

Summary Imagination is surely one of the things that makes us human. It allows us to escape from the here and now, and to travel into the past and the future, the minds of others, the centre of the atom and the outer reaches of space. It allows us to envisage unrealised possibilities, and, sometimes, to bring them about. Our ability to 'visualise', the see things 'in the mind's eye' is a key part of our ability to imagine. This project will bring together researchers from the sciences and the arts to increase our knowledge of visual imagination. We will focus on three related areas of research. First, we will look systematically at the large body of research that has examined what happens in the brain when we imagine, searching for consistent patterns in the varied and sometimes conflicting results of previous studies. We will be alert to what these patterns may imply for the uses of visual imagination, from daydreaming to artistic creation. Second, we will review the insights and theories which artists, students of art, philosophers and others have proposed over the two and half thousand years since such thinking began. We will ask what questions are raised, by these insights and theories, for the science of imagination.Finally, we will study individuals whose visual imagery lies at the extremes of the vividness spectrum. A small proportion of healthy individuals, perhaps two or three in a hundred, lack visual imagination completely. This occurrence has been recognised repeatedly but never studied carefully. We will recruit a group of thirty such people and compare them with thirty people who use imagery constantly in their work as visual artists. We will interview the members of both groups to find out how the absence or abundance of visual imagery affects their experience and everyday lives; we will use brain imaging techniques, and psychological tests, to learn more about the causes and consequences of these normal variations in the ability to imagine. Pursuing these questions will require a team including an art historian, a psychologist, a neurologist, a philosopher and an artist to meet regularly to exchange ideas and plan the work. We will recruit a young researcher to be the project's research fellow. We expect that he or she will have a background in the arts and an interest in the sciences. We will hold three workshops over the life of the project, which will allow all the researchers involved, and a growing group of collaborators to contribute to the work. The final workshop will be a larger conference at which we will report the findings of the project to experts in the area and interested members of the public. We will give two public lectures, designed to be widely accessible, alongside the conference. We will create a website at the start of the project, updating it as we proceed, providing easily understood information about the project and its findings, and offering opportunities for members of the public to become involved. In summary, the project will unite researchers who normally work in isolation from one another in a study of our distinctively human ability to imagine. It will highlight links between our experience, brain science and art. It will throw light on the wide variation in our capacity to 'visualise'. It will pave the way for further work, for example on imagery in other senses, in collaboration with another AHRC project, Rethinking the senses; on neurological and psychiatric disorders, like depression, which can reduce imagination; on how this might be remedied and the use of visual imagination by normal subjects enhanced.