7. The Science of Imagination: Measuring the Invisible (Part 2)

Can you measure imagination? Following Episode 7 - Part 1, Hedi continues his conversation with neurologist Adam Zeman about his book “The Shape of Things Unseen: A New Science of Imagination” – from Francis Galton’s 19th-century “breakfast table” questionnaire to today’s ingenious experiments putting the “mind’s eye” under the microscope. You’ll hear how simply imagining sunlight can make your pupils constrict, and how mental imagery can bias what you see and smell.

We explore how imagination can heal – like playing Tetris after trauma to weaken intrusive images in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – and how it can misfire in the hallucinations of Parkinson’s dise ...