An fMRI investigation of the relationship between future imagination and cognitive flexibility

The frontal cortex actually makes neural firing patterns that represent its own representations. In other words, it allows us to think about thinking.

Using functional magnetic imaging, which measures brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow, researchers at Stanford University monitored the brains of patients under hypnosis and observed several distinct phenomena. First, a decrease in activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate, part of the brain’s salience network, was evident. The reason

Beyond the bodily and survival concerns of the brainstem, beyond the evaluative and emotional limbic functions, beyond even the perceptual processes of the posterior cortex and the motor functions of the posterior portion of the frontal lobe, we come upon the more abstract and symbolic forms of information flow that seem to set us apart as a specie

The areas that showed a decrease in activity are the medial prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulated cortex, which play important roles in the regulation of self-awareness,

Creative people are particularly good at exercising flexibility in activating and deactivating these brain networks that in most people tend to be at odds with each other. In doing so, they’re able to juggle seemingly contradictory modes of thought—cognitive and emotional, deliberate, and spontaneous.43 Even on a neurological level, creativity is m