The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by Doidge Norman

Author:Doidge, Norman [Doidge, Norman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2007-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

What these “imaginary” experiments show is how truly integrated imagination and action are, despite the fact that we tend to think of imagination and action as completely different and subject to different rules. But consider this: in some cases, the faster you can imagine something, the faster you can do it. Jean Decety of Lyon, France, has done different versions of a simple experiment. When you time how long it takes to imagine writing your name with your “good hand,” and then actually write it, the times will be similar. When you imagine writing your name with your nondominant hand, it will take longer both to imagine it and to write it. Most people who are right-handed find that their “mental left hand” is slower than their “mental right hand.” In studies of patients with stroke or Parkinson’s disease (which causes people’s movements to slow), Decety observed that patients took longer to imagine moving the affected limb than the unaffected one. Both mental imagery and actions are thought to be slowed because they both are products of the same motor program in the brain. The speed with which we imagine is probably constrained by the neuronal firing rate of our motor programs.

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