Follow Up on A Curious Thought

Two weeks ago I wrote a blog about new scientific research which maintains that the brain doesn’t recognize the difference between an imagined act and one actually carried out. This scientific discovery intrigued me and brought a fundamental question to mind. What does our brain’s presumed inability to distinguish between imagination and reality mean for creators and purveyors of fiction? I offered no answers, only the question.One of my readers, Donna Marie, came back with an interesting and challenging response. Here it is:

I agree with pretty much all you said, only—and you probably knew there would be an "only" lol—I don't quite buy the "brain doesn't know the difference" thing. That may be true in people who truly can't distinguish reality from fantasy (someone very close to me suffers from schizophrenic issues and his imagination can control him, creating severe paranoia), but although the brainwaves may operate the same way, we, as humans, most certainly can distinguish (for the most part) what is real or imagined.I know that, as a reader, I want to read a book that feels real. I want to be that absorbed, that moved. And a powerful enough book can alter lives, for sure, but as real and strongly as I felt the characters in the Harry Potter series were, and I felt very deeply about the outcome, there was never any confusion about reality. So that's the only beef I have about that statement from the researchers, unless I'm taking it too literally.

I’m glad to have this challenge posed, because I had some of these same questions in my mind, even as I framed the blog. It’s possible that she and I are both taking the neuro scientists’ statement too literally. What, indeed, does it mean that the brain doesn’t distinguish between the real and the imagined? I assume this statement comes out of the fact that when scientists read brain activity, the brain gives the same kind of physical reading to imagined fear, for instance, as it does to being confronted by a fearful event in real time.And yet we all know that we are perfectly capable of reading or hearing about traumatic events without being traumatized ourselves. In fact, sometimes we even seek out scary stories to make ourselves feel more alive or to build up our capacity for facing fear. I have written in the past about my son, Peter, as a toddler, who loved a picture book that had a bear in it, though he was terrified of the bear. Each time we read it, he had to snuggle close and cover his eyes before we turned the page where the bear lived. And yet he asked for that book again and again and again, clearly seeking that small frisson of fear the bear created for him.Our understanding of brains is primitive still. For instance, do we even understand the distinction between brain and mind? So if the brain lights up—or whatever it does when being examined—in the same way for an imagined activity as for a real one, does that mean that the mind recognizes no difference between the two? All our experience says otherwise. I would never go hang gliding, pursue a criminal down a dark alley, consort with werewolves (should I find any werewolves about to consort with), but that doesn’t keep me from reading about/imagining such activities. Whatever my brain may do with the experiences, the person I am recognizes the difference between real and imagined.So even if this failure to distinguish between imagination and reality is nonsense on one level, I am fascinated to know that imagination has such a physical impact on our brains. I don’t know exactly what that impact means for us storytellers, but I am certain of one thing. This new knowledge supports a fundamental assumption we all live by . . . stories spun out of our imaginations matter.And that I find heartening.A bit daunting, too.