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The Intrinsic Relationship Between Imagination and Memories
And where both reside in the brain
At first glance, memories and imagination might seem like opposites on a spectrum. Memories are based on reality with real people, events, and places, whereas imagination is precisely the opposite.
Imagination inspires a quality of magic and incandescence that defies our material plane of existence. Meanwhile, our memories revolve around data collecting, labeling, and archiving our experiences.
Each memory has a purpose, a reason for being stored away instead of discarded — while imagination is wild and often irrational. But science is beginning to show that the two have more in common than meets the eye. In fact, not only are memory and imagination intrinsically connected, but they reside in the same area of our brain.
An Interdependent Relationship
If you think about it, imagination and memory are comprised of essentially the same ingredients — they both take bits and pieces of our thoughts, emotions, and experiences and combine them with things we’ve read, learned, seen, and heard about. Sometimes this combination better predicts a future outcome, while other times, it creates something entirely new, like a fictional story or a work of art.
