That Neuroscience Guy - The Neuroscience of Mental Imagery

Episode Date: October 16, 2022

Before a big game or important meeting, you might rehearse in your head how you think it's going to go. As it turns out, imagining yourself doing something can make you better at it. In today's episode of That Neuroscience Guy, we discuss mental imagery and how it improves performance. 

Hi, my name's Olof Krogolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast. Have you ever been performing a sport, but in your head? You know, you haven't been actually hitting the golf ball, but you've just been imagining yourself hitting the golf ball. Or even in a different element, you're not actually in a business meeting, but you're visualizing in your head what's going to happen in the business meeting and how you're going to handle it.

Mental imagery is an incredibly powerful tool and the neuroscience behind it is completely fascinating. So on today's podcast, the neuroscience of mental imagery. Mental imagery has become a mainstream part of professional and Olympic level or even amateur level sports. It's even gone into the business community, the medical profession, even pilots use visualization techniques. It wasn't that long ago that mental imagery was this thing that wasn't that well known. But now, like I said, it's basically mainstream. In fact, if you were a professional athlete and you weren't using some form of mental training, it would be quite surprising. For example, a lot of Olympians have used mental imagery to help enhance performance. Canadian bobsledder Lyndon Rush wasn't even at the Olympics

back in 2014, but as he sat in the chair at the airport getting ready to go to the games, his own quote was, in his mind's eye, he could see the path that he was going to be traveling down the slopes. That visualization has been embraced by any number of athletes. And not just that, but like I said, the business community. This has gone into almost every aspect of society. So what is mental imagery? Well, mental practice by definition is basically being able to repeatedly perform a skill in your mind without experiencing the physical fatigue. So if you think of it in a sports context, the idea would be that you would execute the skill in your mind. There's also preparatory imagery, and that's used right before performance.

And this is a bit different. This is basically either psyching yourself up or calming yourself down or getting into a state of focus. So mental practice was repeating the skill in your head. Preparatory imagery was getting in the right brain state to perform. And there's even multimodal mental training. That's a technique that's used concurrently with other mental training and physical skills. But how does it really work and what do we mean by it? Well, let's start with the what do we mean part.

The word visualization is basically limited to two senses, what you see and what you hear. So when athletes talk about visualization or people talk about visualization, they're basically talking about seeing the skill and hearing what's happening. But mental imagery is actually supposed to be more engaging and you're supposed to engage all five of your senses. Sight and sound, but also taste, smell, and touch and feel. So let's imagine you were going to putt a golf ball. If you're not a big golfer, think of mini golf. So visualization would just be what you see and what you hear.

But with imagery, you would see yourself about to putt the golf ball. You would imagine the sounds that you might be hearing around you. Now, you might think taste is a bit weird, but sometimes in a high stress situation, the world mini golf championships maybe, there is a sort of taste that you get in your mouth. As a former athlete, I can tell you that's a thing. And there's a smell. I used to play a lot of basketball and gyms have a smell to them. It's not the most pleasant smell, but there's a smell there. And the touch and feel part, imagine that you're about to do that putt. Well, there is a feel. You can feel the golf club,

that little leathery feeling on the handle. So if you're doing imagery and you want to do it properly, you're engaging all five of your senses. Now, why use imagery? The research is conclusive. Whether it's in the business domain or the sports domain or in other domains like musical performance, mental imagery improves performance. The results are conclusive. It's not something that may or may not work. The science is there. Now, what are some of the benefits of imagery? Well, if you think of the preparatory imagery, where you're just trying to get ready for competition,

imagery has been shown to enhance self-confidence, so you feel better about what you're about to do. It enhances motivation. You're more wanting to do what you're going to do. It enhances intentional control. And basically that means you're more focused. It helps decrease anxiety before going into the meeting or stepping out onto the sports field. And it basically is very effective in changing an athlete's perception of anxiety from being harmful and negative to being something that's actually embraced, that little, yeah, let's get on with this and do this. Now, the big question is, why does it work?

The original theories on mental imagery were that it was all about timing. So you were just rehearsing the timing of an action. You could imagine that if you were that bobsledder I mentioned earlier, when you go down the bobsled track, there is a timing to this, when you're going to make a turn to the left, when you're going to make a turn to the right. And mental imagery was just thought to do that. Other people proposed that it was all about learning the cognitive elements of a task. So whether it's a doctor about to do a surgery, a musician about to play a piece, or a basketball player on the basketball court, there is a cognitive element to sport. Where you're going to pass a ball, when you're going to shoot a ball.

In a business meeting, it's pretty obvious what you're going to say and how you're going to make your decisions. So that was another theory that was there. In some cases, people talked about the fact that it was engaging the ocular system. And there's some really cool studies that show this, that when you get people to imagine mental imagery, if you use eye tracking and imagine you're on a tennis court and you get them to visualize playing tennis, their eyes will move in a manner very similar to when they're actually on the tennis court. And it engages the body. There's activation of body systems. When people are engaging in mental imagery, you do see changes in heart rate, in breathing, and even in the muscles. Now, they're not the same as doing it physically, but there is a change there which shows that the body and the brain is engaged to some extent. And that, of course, is the real reason mental imagery works.

It's the brain. Early research put athletes into MRI scanners and using functional magnetic resonance imaging, which we talked about back in season two. But basically, it's a way you can peer inside the brain and see what's going on. And they had people make movements. Now, those were very simple movements, just moving their fingers, rotating at the wrists. And when people physically do this, the motor areas of the brain act up. And we've talked about those areas in the past, but you see activity in the primary motor cortex because you're actually contracting muscles. You see activity in the supplementary motor area, in the lateral premotor area, in the cerebellum.

Now, when they got the people to imagine making those same movements, guess what? The same motor regions were activated with the sole exception of the primary motor cortex, which is really the part that's going to send the signal to the muscle. So when you're using mental imagery for a motor task, you're engaging motor parts of the brain and it's like they're active. They're actually practicing. Now, I want to say this right now and get it over and done with. You can't sit on your couch and mental imagery yourself into being an Olympian. You have to put in the physical practice. That's where that 10,000 hours comes in. But mental imagery is an excellent supplement to physical practice and will enhance performance even greater because you're engaging the parts of the brain that are active when you perform the skill. because you're engaging the parts of the brain that are active when you perform the skill. Now, that's a sports example, but the same is true in music or in business or even in medicine. Studies have looked at doctors and they've had them actually doing medical maneuvers,

say suturing something, and then they have them imaging that. And again, the same regions of the brain light up. Now, that's kind of a motor example too. So I'll give you one more. One of my favorite studies was looking at executive business people and they were basically having a conversation from the MRI scanner, which was a business negotiation. And then they had them imagine the negotiation. And just like the other examples, the parts of the brain involved in decision-making in this case, so the prefrontal cortex, were active when they actually were making decisions, but they were also active when the businessmen were engaged in mental imagery. So why does mental imagery work? Because you're activating your brain

and essentially rehearsing. So the parts of the brain that are involved in whatever you're going to do are active when you're using mental imagery. Now, I thought I'd end this podcast by giving you some tips on how to use mental imagery. So it's not just why it works, but hey, you can try it yourself. Now, I'm not a professional sports psychologist, so this is me translating some notes from some of my friends at work. But these are the basics of using mental imagery. When you are using mental imagery, it's important that you use an internal focus versus an external focus.

What I mean by that is an internal focus is seeing it through your own eyes. So if we go back to that putting example, you're looking down and you're seeing the club in your hands, you're seeing the ball, you're looking to the left and you're seeing the hole. So it's like you're seeing it through your own eyes. And external focus would be like seeing a camera on you. So you're like watching a TV or a screen showing you doing something. So internal focus is better than external focus when you use mental imagery. You have to engage all your senses. I mentioned that at the outset, but it can't just be sights and sounds. You've got to go taste, you've got to go smell, and you've got to go touch as well.

If you use all five of your senses, mental imagery will be more effective. The timing is really important. When you mentally rehearse something, you have to make sure that you're taking the same amount of time as it would in the real world. So for instance, if you were going to mentally imagine yourself going down a slope while skiing, the time it takes you to do this must be the same as if you were actually physically doing it. So you can't sort of fast forward through it because then mental imagery won't work as well. You have to be in the right environment, especially when you're learning this. So I

wouldn't advise using mental imagery in a loud and noisy environment that's distracting because it'll distract you. Now, as you get better at it, there is some evidence to show that you might want to actually be in the environment that you will be performing in. But at the start, find the right environment so you can relax and focus on the imagery. You have to tie it to regular practice. So let's say you were learning to play tennis. You know, you go out and play tennis on Monday and you play again on Wednesday and you play again on Friday. Then you could use mental imagery on Tuesday and Thursday to rehearse what you had learned the day before. You can't just use mental imagery on its own.

You're never going to learn something unless you actually do it. And you have to make it a regular part of practice. Mental imagery is a skill and people get better with mental imagery with practice. So you can't just decide to do it once in a while. It has to be something you commit to and you use all the time. And last but not least, you have to believe it works. I'd suggest if you want to try mental imagery, find someone in your field that uses it and listen to what they have to say. For me, it was basketball and I heard a lot of great basketball players talk about how they use mental imagery to improve their performance.

And I thought to myself, you know, if that athlete's doing this, then it's going to work for me too. So, that's the neuroscience of mental imagery. It's pretty straightforward. When you use mental imagery, you're engaging the parts of your brain just as you would if you were actually performing the skill or the task in the environment. So remember, if you got ideas for episodes, we're almost got into all of season four planned out, but we have one or two episodes to fill in. You can follow me on Twitter at that neuroscience guy

and DM me, or you can email us at that neuroscience guy at gmail.com. And remember there's the website that neuroscience guy.com there. You've got links to Patreon. Thank you to those of you that are supporting us. All of the money is going to graduate students in my lab to help them get through graduate school. So thank you so much. If you're not familiar with Patreon, remember it's just a way you can sign up and donate a dollar a month or a dollar a week. Any amount is amazing. We also have our t-shirts. We got a few new ideas where we want to get out there and we'll get those out to you. And of course, there's the podcast itself. Please subscribe and thank you so much for listening. Myself and my team really appreciate it. My name is Olof Krogolsen

and I'm that neuroscience guy. I'll see you on Wednesday for another neuroscience bite.