October 29, 2025 • 49 mins
In this episode of The Evolving Leader, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to neurologist and author Adam Zeman about his latest book The Shape of Things Unseen. Together they explore how imagination helps us step outside the here and now, recall the past, and anticipate the future, and why this ability matters more than ever in a world shaped by automation and accelerating change.
Adam takes us inside the science of the mind’s eye, from aphantasia (the inability to visualise) to hyperphantasia (imagery as vivid as reality), and unpacks what these differences reveal about creativity, culture and leadership. This conversation offers practical insights for leaders on cultivating imagination within organisations, the role of daydreaming in innovation, and how to create environments where ideas can flourish.
Further materials from Adam Zeman:
Zeman, A. (2025). The Shape of Things Unseen: A New Science of Imagination. Bloomsbury.
Zeman, A., Milton, F., Della Sala, S. (2024). “Aphantasia and Hyperphantasia: Exploring imagery vividness extremes.” Cortex, 170, 1–14.
Zeman, A. (2024). “Aphantasia: The science of visual imagery absence.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 28(3), 189–200.
Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)
The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)
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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.
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After more than 5 years of hosting The Evolving Leader, Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are launching their new show The Mindset Economy in January 2026. The new show will explore how to live better, work smarter and be connected in a more uncertain world where machines can think.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jean Gomes (00:18):
Imagination is low down on the priorities for
today's time poor executivesconsume meetings and approvals,
the coming wave of automationinduced change will go far
beyond the downsizing that'scurrently taking place in many
corporates the scarce commodityof imagination will increasingly
separate those organisations whocan envisage and build wholly
(00:42):
new futures from those whocontinue to double down and
defend their existing businessmodels. We're perhaps months
away from the first billiondollar unicorns that have one or
two people running them, ifthat's not an incentive to wake
up and see the need for buildingimagination engines in your
organisations. Led from the top,what is
(01:04):
in this show, we talked to AdamZeman about his latest book, The
shape of things unseen, whichgets us to rethink imagination,
not just as a creative process,but as a means to orientate
ourselves to the world and itsfuture possibilities. Tune in to
an important conversation on theevolving leader.
Scott Allender (01:26):
Hi folks.
Welcome to the evolving leader,the show born from the belief
that we need deeper, moreaccountable and more human
leadership to confront theworld's biggest challenges. I'm
Scott Allender, along with JeanGomes, and today we're going to
have an amazing conversation,because we are joined by Adam
Zeman. Adam is Honorary FellowCentre for clinical Brain
Sciences at the University ofEdinburgh, an honorary professor
(01:48):
of neurology at the Universityof Exeter, and he was brought up
in London, and after earning adegree in philosophy and
psychology, he trained inmedicine at Oxford University
Medical School. His earlierbooks include consciousness, a
user's guide, a portrait of thebrain, and is co author of
epilepsy and memory. But todaywe're here to discuss his latest
(02:11):
book, The shape of thingsunseen, which gets us to rethink
imagination, not just as acreative process, but as the
means to plan, read and a hostof other ways in which we can
experience the world. Adam,welcome to the evolving leader.
Adam Zeman (02:26):
Thank you very much for having me.
Scott Allender (02:29):
Adam, it may seem blindingly obvious, but
what is imagination? Well,that's not such an easy question
to answer, but the sense ofimagination that I had,
particularly in mind in thisbook, was the sense in which it
means our capacity to detachourselves from the here and now,
recollect the past, anticipatethe future, enter the virtual
worlds created by artists andscientists.
Adam Zeman (02:51):
So that's a rather high level sense of imagination.
I think it can be used in avariety of other ways. It can be
used in the sense of ourcapacity to form an image, which
could be the image on yourretina, or the image of the
world around you, or the imageof something that's absent, so
the apple that you reading anhour ago, or your breakfast
table as you as you left it thismorning. So it's it's a it's not
(03:16):
a term of science. It's anambiguous term. It's important
to be clear which sense one hasin mind when one's trying to
make sense of it. But yes, I hadin mind that very broad sense of
imagination, in which is thatcapacity that allows us to
detach ourselves, ourselves fromthe here and now, which I think
is a rather fundamental humancapacity, if you were looking
for a psychological capacitywhich is particularly
(03:36):
distinctive in Homo sapiens. Ithink it would arguably be that
one we live much of our lives inour heads as a result. And
given, given that description,it says encompass a fairly broad
range of mental processes, and,you know, diversity of human
nature. I mean, is it fair tosay that imagination, therefore,
could look very different todifferent people in terms of,
(03:58):
you know, that inner canvas,that inner way of thinking about
things? Yeah, absolutely. So ifwe, if you, think particularly
about sensory imagery. So that'sthe ability to represent things
in their absence as they mightappear to you if they were
present. So imagining that thatApple or your best friend's
face, that seems to be extremelyvariable from person to person.
(04:21):
So I've spent quite a bit oftime over the last 10 years
exploring the rather fascinatingphenomenon of a Fantasia. So
this is the lack of the lack ofa mind's eye, and it seems that
about 4% of people simply don't,don't visualise at all. They
they at a certain point in theirdevelopment, they realise that
when other people speak aboutthe mind's eye, they are talking
(04:41):
about the capacity to have anexperience that really is
somewhat visual. And up tillthat point, they'd always
assumed that this was just justa metaphor. So they can think
perfectly well about an apple inits absence, or a breakfast
table in its absence, butthey've never been able to
visualise it. And it turns outthat people without Fantasia,
who can't visualise, quite oftenlack or have very thin sensory
imagery across the board, so notmuch of a mind's ear or a mind's
(05:04):
fingertip, whereas there areothers who we've described as
having hyperphantasia, for whomvisualisation is as vivid as
real seeing and they for.
Example, quite often havedifficulty in being sure whether
they'd imagine something orthey've really seen it, whether
it's really whether it reallyhappened.
Scott Allender (05:21):
Actually have a family member that has the I
can't pronounce what you justsaid, but the inability to
imagine division. Yeah, isthere? Is there a in your
research and your studies andwhat you in this whole topic,
did you find that what's thewhat determines the scale for
people? Like, is there, like, Isthere things happening in the
(05:44):
brain, or what's going on in thebody? Like, what's happening for
people to have these sort ofdifferent levels of being able
to imagine?
Adam Zeman (05:50):
So that's really work in progress. I mean, it
does, it does seem that this isa these differences are real
differences, not just anartefact of misdescription. Say.
So there's nice work, forexample, showing that if you are
a visualizer and you imaginelooking into the sun or looking
(06:10):
into a bright room, your pupilsconstrict, which doesn't,
doesn't happen in people with afantasy. If you read somebody
with imagery very scary story,they will tend to sweat. People
with a Fantasia don't. And theexplanation is probably that you
need imagery to mediate betweenthe story and the and the gut
(06:33):
response. What the underlyingdifference is in the brain is a
really interesting question, andthere have been half a dozen
papers over the last year onexactly that. It looks as if,
interestingly, people withaphantasia do activate visual
regions of the brain when theythink about the appearances of
(06:54):
things, which is what peoplewith imagery do. But there seem
to be differences inconnectivity in the brain, which
are probably relevant tounderstanding the difference
between people with vividimagery and people who like it.
And it may also be that therepresentations in visual areas
are rather different in peoplewith a Fantasia. So they the the
(07:18):
way the brain is activated whenthey visualise is less similar
to the way it's activated whenthey see things than it is in
people with vivid imagery, ifthat makes sense. So there's a
there's more overlap betweenimagery and perception and
people with vivid imagery thanthere is in people who who have
thinner, thin imagery or lackit. But as I say, work, work in
progress. When you knew
Jean Gomes (07:41):
talking earlier, and you said when you were asked to
visualise a face, for example,and immediately my brain is
going to try and visualise mymum, actually, who passed a few
years ago. And the differencebetween that kind of day dreamy
type of imagination where thingsjust pop into your head, really
fully formed, versus you tell meto think of something, and I
(08:01):
find it struck. I struggle to dothat. What are the conditions
for kind of mobilisingimagination, intentionally
versus reactively?
Adam Zeman (08:12):
Yeah, no, that's a really interesting question, is
this, and you're right, thatmuch of the work done by
psychologists has involved therather artificial phenomenon of
voluntary, deliberateimagination. So think of an
apple, which is not somethingwhere we're doing constantly.
That's that's going to be a verytop down task, isn't it? You're
going to use regions of thebrain that are involved in
(08:32):
cognitive control to driveregions of the brain that are
involved involved in sensation.
So visualisation has beendescribed as vision in reverse.
Normally, there's informationstreaming in through the senses,
activating visual areas, leadingto recognition. When you
visualise deliberately, you'resort of doing the opposite. So
that's a highly deliberate,voluntary, rather artificial
setup. Contrast that with whathappens when you're reading a
(08:57):
novel. So many people, whenthey're reading a descriptive
passage in a novel will formmore or less vivid image of
what's going on. And that'sthat's not top down in the same
sense as the previous task, theimagery is somehow being
orchestrated by the the wordsyou're reading and the images
form involuntarily. It seemsthat both those kinds of imagery
(09:18):
are probably lacking in peoplewith a Fantasia. But then
there's another kind of imagerywhich happens in our dreams,
which is, of course,involuntary, very vivid, with a
hallucinatory or delusionalquality. So we think we're
really there, and really ratherfascinatingly, people, most
people with aphantasia Do dreamvisually. So there's a, there's
a dissociation between betweenvoluntary and involuntary, or I
(09:39):
think rather between wakeful anddream imagery. Dream Dream
imagery representing a, I guess,the kind of extreme form of
involuntary imagery on thatspectrum. So I think it seems
that every kind of sensoryimagery is going to involve
activity in sensory areas in thebrain, but you can generate that
(10:01):
activity by by very differentroutes, by very deliberate
route, when you're asked tovisualise an apple by a more
relaxed route. When you'rereading a novel, and then by a
kind of bottom up, entirelyinvoluntary route, when while
you're dreaming,
Jean Gomes (10:22):
when you're walking or, you know, in the shower or
something, and your brain issort of idling, and you tend to
generate lots of kind ofunbidden thoughts and
imagination. What's going onthere that's different from from
the other aspects you've justdescribed.
Adam Zeman (10:36):
Yeah, yeah. So I think this is a really, really
interesting area, and it, I mustit's, it's an area in which
discoveries over the last 20 or30 years have made sense of
things that just were verydifficult to understand in
neurological terms when I cameinto neurology. And I think they
are, they're fundamental toimagination in the sense in the
(10:58):
sense of creativity. So ourability to create things that
are to make things that are bothnew and useful, which is how
creativity is generally defined,depends to a substantial degree
on a kind of spontaneity that wehave come to understand better
through these discoveries overthe last 20 or 30 years, and
(11:18):
there are quite a number of niceexamples. So let me, let me give
you the example of replay. Sothis is a fascinating
phenomenon, which was discoveredfirst in rats, but turns out to
occur in people too. If you gofor a walk in a new place,
whether you're a rat or aperson, you will begin to lay
(11:39):
down a memory of its spatiallayout. And it turns out that
over the period after your walk,the brain will replay the route,
particularly in periods ofrestfulness, when you're when
you're idling and in sleep, andto some extent, but probably to
(12:03):
a great extent, that process isan unconscious one, but we know
that it's kind of ticking awayin the background, and it might
be the explanation for some ofthose mysterious, Spontaneous
images that appear in our heads.
Don't know whether you have mypartner calls them Stuttgart
station moments. It's when, whena place that you haven't thought
about or visited for ages justcomes into your into your mind,
completely out of the out of theblue. So replay is one example
(12:26):
of the of the the ceaseless,spontaneous activity the brain
occurring in the in thebackground of our lives, another
night, another nice example ofspontaneous activity comes from
studies of what's been calledthe the brain's resting state.
So brain imaging studies, untilabout 20 years ago, always
(12:51):
involved giving people a task,and then you'd see what happens
in the brain when you'reperforming that task, as opposed
to when you're resting or whenyou're performing some other
task. But it turns out that ifpeople just lie in a scanner,
the brain is constantly active,and it's possible to use
statistical techniques to pullout networks within the resting
(13:13):
brain. So not surprisingly,there's a group of visual areas
which talk to one another and agroup of motor areas involved in
controlling movement which talkto one another. But there are
also networks which are ratherless obvious, which have been
identified using this approach.
And perhaps the most interestingis the default mode network, and
(13:35):
it's so called because this isthe set of regions which is
especially active in the restingbrain. It's level activity
stands out above the background.
And this set of regions turnsout to be involved essentially
in the things that we dointuitively when we daydream. So
it's involved in thinking aboutthe past, anticipating the
future, thinking about otherminds, you know, the person who
(13:56):
offended you yesterday, thinkingabout some slightly tricky moral
decision that you have to take.
So it is, this is a bit of acaricature, but it is. It is, in
a sense, a daydreaming networkthat becomes especially active
when you when your mind isidling. And it's not, not a huge
(14:17):
leap, I think, to suspect thatthat notebook is likely to be
involved in in creativity. Icould give other examples.
There's, there means nicestudies of insight. So there are
problems which, which you cansolve, either in a deliberate
fashion or in a kind ofspontaneous, insightful fashion.
(14:39):
So for example, if I ask youwhat single word unites tree,
pine and source, it's veryunlikely to come to you, but
Apple is the common denominator,pineapple, apple tree, Apple
source. Now you can arrive atApple by thinking about it hard
(15:03):
for a long time and runningthrough alternatives, but people
will sometimes have a moment ofillumination, a moment of
insight. And it turns out thatthat moment of insight, which
you can study in a in a brainscanner, has a particular. A
neural signature, interestingly,involving a burst of activity
not on the left side of thebrain, which is classically
involved in language, but on theright side of the brain, where
meanings are rather morevaguely, loosely represented. So
(15:28):
just the kind of representationthat you need to be able to to
come up with the remoteassociate of it's called of the
three items that were presented.
So we're kind of beginning todevelop an understanding of the
the processes which take place,in some sense below the radar in
the brain, but which are, are, Ithink, absolutely crucial for
(15:49):
creativity, not, of course, thatcreativity depends just on
spontaneity, as as I explainedin the book, I think it create.
It depends critically on veryhigh levels of skill, so very
few creative human creativeachievements that that don't
occur as a result of trainingand development of skill and
cognitive control is alsoinvolved. Creativity, I think,
(16:13):
depends on a kind of interestingdance between spontaneity,
control and and training.
Scott Allender (16:24):
So is it fair to say that imagination is sort of
our default setting over sort ofrational processes? Yeah.
Adam Zeman (16:31):
I mean, certainly that's, that's what the resting
state work suggests, yep, yes. Imean, daydreaming seems to be a
very natural mode for the humanbrain. And there are those
lovely studies showing that ifyou sample experience by getting
a buzzer to ring in somebody'spocket at random intervals
between a quarter and a half thetime, our minds are wondering
(16:54):
and we're daydreaming. And infact, the most common content of
the conscious mind is not thehere and now. It's not the
immediate perceptual world. It'sit's imagery.
Scott Allender (17:09):
How does all this sort of help us think
differently about the roles weplay in our lives as leaders and
partners, and all the roles weplay like, how does, how does
this sort of understanding ofimagination? What? What can it
do for us?
Adam Zeman (17:24):
I think it can give us a kind of renewed respect for
the complexity and also thegenerativity of our own minds.
So as as the neuroscientistSandile Seth has put it rather
nicely, our experience is moreinside out than it is outside
(17:45):
in. You know, where I thinkthat's a that's an important
message from contemporaryneuroscience, that that we are.
We're constantly predicting theworld into being, and much of
our experience depends on ourpriors, on assumptions we make
about the about the world, and Iguess it helps us to understand
(18:10):
as as a result of what I've justsaid. It helps us to understand
differences of perspectivebetter than we otherwise might.
We are We are creatures ofculture, where we're created by
our education and exposure tothe cultural world around us.
(18:32):
What is one of the things that'smost distinct about the human
brain is it's huge. Is its hugestorage space for difference. We
are all very different from oneanother, but both individually
and across cultures, we shouldrespect those differences
because because Manners makethman and our traditions are
(18:53):
hugely important. But I thinkthis new science helps us to
understand that thesedifferences are also very
arbitrary. So it's a very strongargument against fundamentalism
of any kind, in my view. Youknow, yes, you you must respect
difference, but, but we shouldalso acknowledge that our own
(19:14):
take on the world is unlikely tobe the only privileged one that
gives us the one and only trueview of things. I wanted to
write an article for a long timecalled you do not belong to the
chosen people, but
Jean Gomes (19:32):
pick your moment for that one.
Scott Allender (19:35):
Good title.
Jean Gomes (19:39):
You know, when you write a book, and this is a this
is a wonderful book to take onholiday with you, I think
because it gives you a chance tokind of think about a lot of
things in a different way. Whatwhat in that process was most
surprising to you, either aboutresearch that you had come
across that made you think aboutthings differently, or something
(20:01):
you learn about yourself in inthis or you re evaluated
yourself through the process ofdoing it.
Adam Zeman (20:08):
Yeah, that's a very good question. I mean, certainly
one of the I. Best reasons forwriting a book is that it
enables you to find out about asubject to read widely in the
and the task of explaining whatyou've discovered to others is a
(20:29):
useful discipline. I felt thatin this book, I was, in a sense,
repaying debts. So I've had aI've taken a slightly unusual
intellectual journey, and then Ireally started out life, mainly
interested in the arts, and thenfound my way to science through
(20:49):
psychology, and that took me tothe brain. And I was delighted
to discover the brain, becauseit it seemed to me that what I
was learning about the brain, tosome extent, validated the study
of subjectivity, which I'dbecome rather dubious about. I'd
(21:10):
begun to distrust my reactionsas a as a reader or an
appreciator, appreciator of art,what I learned about the brain
helped to to kind of renew my myconfidence in those reactions,
because it seemed that therewere discoverable correlates
between subjective experienceand objective happenings in the
(21:33):
Brain. So I guess overall,that's been my main, my main
source of fulfilment in thisline of work, that I've taken a
journey from the from the artsto the sciences and back again,
and what I've discovered aboutthe brain has helped to restore
(21:59):
my confidence in in in the thekind of appreciative in my
appreciative sensibilities, ifyou like, with with regard to
the arts, I'm wondering whetherthere's anything In the course
of writing the book thatparticularly surprised me. I
(22:19):
think, I mean, this may, thismay sound slightly lame, but I
think what the book, what theprocess of writing the book, did
for me particularly, was toreinforce the hunches that I
began with. So I suppose youcould, you could write a book
with a with an idea that feelsinteresting, and as you read and
think you might come to theconclusion that this wasn't a
(22:42):
good you didn't start in theright place. But, but actually,
I I felt that the the four ideaswhich I began with were actually
borne out by by what Idiscovered. So those four ideas
are that, first of all, that welive much of a life in our
heads, as we've been discussing,that seems to be very
characteristic about about acharacteristic thing about
people. Secondly, that becomes alittle less puzzling when you
(23:07):
appreciate that actually all ourexperience comes from our heads.
And that was a that was a viewthat all my reading and thinking
about psychology had brought meto. But nevertheless, it's a,
it's, it's quite a startlingview. So it's, it's, I was
(23:27):
reassured to find not only thatthe evidence pointed that way,
but also that a lot ofcontemporary thinkers believe
that then third. The third ideais that in sensory imagination,
we essentially run the brainsystems that we use when we
perceive the world offline. Sothere's a lot in common between
imagination and perception inthe brain. Kind of interesting
(23:49):
idea. And then the fourth, thefourth big idea is that what is
special about us is that we haveevolved to share what we
imagine. So I think probablymany animals may well have
imaginative experience, but theyaren't able to coordinate their
imaginative experience in theway that we can. And that, you
know, you could say, Well,that's obvious. We can talk to
(24:12):
each other. No animals can dothat. And that's true. But I
think this, our ability to talkto each other actually rests on
a deeper ability to share ourminds, which has evolved over
the course of the last fewmillion years, in which you can
you can see developing ininfants and small children who
are pre linguistic or only inthe very early stage, stages of
(24:35):
language. It's really thatability to share our minds that
language rests on, depends on.
So those, those are the fourideas that I started out with. I
might have ended up doubtingthem, and actually I I was
pleased to find that I thinkthey're true. Any of them
individually is original either,but it was fun to bring them
together.
Jean Gomes (24:56):
No, well, I think, I mean, it's very interesting
listening to how an author and aresearcher actually goes through
the thought processes and ofwriting a book, because it was,
we all know it's not an easything to do, so a lot of people
are interested not just in thework itself, but actually the
process. Of the work. Yeah, the
Adam Zeman (25:15):
there was a, there's a funny postscript to that,
which is that the this booklived with me during the
pandemic. So I had quite, I hadmore time for it, I guess, than
than I'd expected, in a way. Andthe publisher had commissioned
100,000 words, and I delivered150,000 and I thought they'd be
delighted that this was sort ofthree for two, but, but no, so I
then, I then had to shed 50,000words, which was
Scott Allender (25:39):
not they couldn't imagine a big book. Can
we? Can we build on some ofthese ideas from a bias
perspective and some pitfallsaround that? So this sort of
living in our head inside outpicture of reality. How do we
then challenge our ownassumptions and confront our own
(26:01):
biases and and get honest aboutthe way that our depiction of
reality, our imaginations andconstructs might be, you know,
creating adverse impact in waysthat we don't intend?
Adam Zeman (26:14):
I think that's a that's a very, very important
question, isn't it, politicallyand societally? I'll begin with
just a couple of anecdotes. Ithink it's not too hard to
change your take on the world ifyou are willing to take a plunge
(26:34):
to expose yourself to somethingnew. So I've had two specific
experience of this, experiencesof this, relatively trivial
ones, in a sense. But one isthat as a teenager, I used
occasionally to hear Indianmusic on the radio. I just
couldn't understand how anybodycould want to listen to this
discordant jangle of sound. Andthen when I was a student, I
just happened, I can't quiteremember how I just happened to
(26:55):
go along to hear Ravi Shankarplaying. Shankar playing in
Oxford town hall with somedancers and drummers, and I was
completely captivated, and thenbegan listening to Indian music.
And it doesn't it didn't takevery long for that discordant
jangle to become somethingextremely, extraordinarily
beautiful and exciting. But ittook a it took a particular
(27:16):
exposure, I guess, to allow meto take that step. And the other
experience was going to Kenyafor my medical elective. As a
medical student, I spent fourmonths in Western Kenya, and
when I arrived in my MissionHospital, I was surrounded by a
sea of faces I couldn'tdistinguish from one another. It
(27:36):
took about a month, I guess, forthose faces to become as easily
distinguished as any faces wereat home. And then when I came
back to London, I kind of wantedto shake hands with every dark
face I met on the street,because of the very strong sense
of affinity I developed. So thatwas a very dramatic experience
of perspective change throughthrough simple sensory exposure.
(28:00):
I've had a bit of experience asan academic of multidisciplinary
work, where you are trying totackle a project, which people
from different disciplinesapproach in very different ways.
Sometimes those projects works.
Sometimes they don't. I thinkthey will only work if you spend
some time getting to know eachother, if you like each other,
(28:23):
and if you're prepared to work abit to learn how, learn a bit
about the the approach taken bythe the others. And I would have
thought that that general, thosegeneral principles, must apply
more broadly. So we we have totake a bit of time to to get to
know each other and get to knoweach other's points of view. I
don't think there are anyshortcuts, but that's that's
(28:45):
likely to be helpful inovercoming prejudice. I'm, you
know, I think tribalism isalmost comes very naturally to
people. I think we're naturallytribal. I'm naturally very
tribal. I quite often have havethe experience of discounting
somebody or discountingsomebody's point of view,
because I just they just don't,you know, it's not, not what I'm
(29:06):
used to. And then, you know,little while later, you discover
great richness in that person orin that person's point of view.
So the way I mean this may sounda bit trite, but the way I've
kind of summarised this tomyself recently is that one of
the really distinctive thingsabout us is that we are all all
very different from one another,but an equally important thing
(29:30):
about us is that we're allpretty much the same, and you
have to hold those two, thosetwo ideas, in in mind, I think,
in your dealings with others,if, if at all possible,
Sara Deschamps (29:47):
welcome back to the evolving leader podcast. As
always, if you enjoy what youhear, then please share the
podcast across your network, andalso leave us a rating and a
review. Now let's get back tothe conversation.
Jean Gomes (30:01):
Our imagination can can run wild, and it can
sometimes overwhelm us. What Whydoes this happen? How does it
work?
Adam Zeman (30:09):
Taking a step back to the idea that perception,
that our experience of theworld. World is is, in a sense,
more inside out than it isoutside, in that it's that it's
generative, that where that weoccupy live in a world and
imagined world. So that onepsychologist, Chris Fitz, has
described our experience theworld as a kind of controlled
(30:30):
hallucination. We hallucinate aworld which, fortunately, most
of the time corresponds toreality. So if all that is true,
then it's not hard to see howsometimes we can lose touch with
with reality. We the checks andbalances which most of the time
allow us to bring our thegenerative processes which
(30:55):
produce our experience into linewith reality. From time to time,
there's those checks andbalances are going to fail. So I
give a wide range of examples inthe book of this happening. So
to take one familiar examplethat would be familiar to many
(31:16):
people, hallucinations areextremely common after
bereavement, so many people wholose a spouse with whom they've
lived for decades will, fromtime to time, hear or see or be
touched by that person who havea very strong sense of That
person's presence. And ofcourse, very few predictions are
(31:37):
as strong if you've lived withsomebody for 30 years as the
prediction that that that personis going to be sitting in the
armchair when you open the dooror be there when you when you
roll over in bed. So it makesperfect sense that from time to
time, expectation will become sostrong that it actually turns
into reality for for a moment.
So that would be, that's, that'san example of a kind of everyday
(32:02):
hallucination. And there aremany similar examples from
situations in which people aredeprived of normal input. So the
Charles Bonnet syndrome is asyndrome in which people who
lose vision, usually late inlife, hallucinate vividly. It's
(32:23):
quite common. It occurs inperhaps a quarter of people who
who lose vision late in life,that they will experience formed
hallucinations. They don'tgenerally talk about them
because they're perfectly awarethat they're not real. They
don't want to be thought of ascrazy. But again, this is an
example of the generative brainat work having lost one of its
(32:45):
normal checks and balances,which is input from the visual
world. I mean, in that context,it seems almost as if sensory
input is inhibitory rather thanexcitatory. What it's doing is
to kind of damp down the brain'stendency to to generate
experience. And when you whenyou lose that input, the brain's
(33:07):
generativity becomes very, veryclear. Prison there. There's a
variety of types ofhallucination, which we
described in people who areimprisoned or are in very
monotonous landscapes. So if youknow the Mirage, if you're
walking through a desert or likepilots, are quite prone to
hallucinations when they'redriving in very when they're
(33:29):
flying in very monotonousconditions at night, right?
Yeah.
Scott Allender (33:34):
Didn't want to know that. Yeah, that's super
interesting. Can we train ourimaginations
Adam Zeman (33:44):
so they work better for us? Yeah? I I am sure that
we can. Of course, it depends alittle on what sense of
imagination you are thinking of,but let's think of the creative
imagination. I talked to quite anumber of creative people in the
course of writing the book,researching the book, one of the
(34:05):
things that struck me was thatyou can sort of turn creative
people on and off, like a like atap, so they I don't, I don't
want to name anyoneindividually, but I talked to a
(34:26):
number of people in whom it wasclear that they was they were so
used to Using material which theworld supplied them with to
create stories, for example,that this happened almost
automatically as a result of akind of lifelong cultivation of
that particular creative habit.
So that's not, not in the leastto say that their creativity
(34:51):
isn't skillful. Indeed, it, Ithink it's precisely to say that
it is skillful, but it, but itbecomes a such a such a highly
trained skill that rather littleeffort sometimes is needed to
drive it so. A question has beenraised whether people who lack
(35:15):
imagery could train their visualimagination. That seems to be
difficult. So many people I'vespoken to have tried, but it's
rather as if there were somebiological obstacle in their
way. They seem to find it veryhard to cultivate imagery. But
my guess is that just about anypsych with with some exceptions,
(35:37):
people for whom there might besome biological logical
obstacle, just about anypsychological capacity is going
to be like a muscle. It will, itwill be to some degree,
trainable. And I'm sure thatthis is true of imagination. I
came across a number ofinteresting tricks that people
have used to make the most oftheir imagination. So Robert
Louis Stevenson, for example,was aware that many of his
(36:03):
better ideas came to him on theverge of sleep. So he used to
rest with his elbow on a tableso that if he if he dropped off
for a moment, his head wouldfall forward, and he would then
wake just at the moment ofdropping into sleep, which might
deliver an idea. And ThomasEdison, of the night bulb used
to hold a weight in his hand sothat at the moment he nodded
(36:25):
off, the weight would drop andhe would be woken in the same in
the same state. So that'sthat's, I guess, training
yourself to to make the most ofspontaneous gifts from from the
from the unconscious.
Jean Gomes (36:39):
Yeah, I think Salvador Dali did that all as
well. Didn't he had that he usedto yes, that set of keys. That's
right, yeah, to get that liminalplace. Yeah. What do you think
the future of imagination is inthe sense that when the world
becomes more and more automated,does imagination take on a new
(37:03):
importance or significance inthe future of mankind?
Adam Zeman (37:08):
Well, I would say that imagination is imagination
makes us what we are really, youknow, we, we are absolutely
cultural creatures. And all ourtraditions, all our artefacts,
are the product of products ofacts active imagination. So it's
kind of he fund, utterly,absolutely fundamental our
(37:30):
capacity to to to be creativeand to to to use the form of
imagination that sustainscreativity. And I can't see that
changing. I guess that, AI, ofcourse, raises interesting
(37:51):
questions here. Is it possiblethat artificial systems will,
artificial intelligence willbecome as or more creative than
we are. Doesn't seem that that'sthe case just yet, but it's a
possibility for the future.
We're certainly going to to needto get on on terms with our with
(38:13):
the AI assistance, I think it
Scott Allender (38:20):
feels like there's at least a temptation to
outsource our creativity to thelikes of chat GPT, right? Sort
of, instead of maybe spending alot of energy trying to be
creative, we sort of just put inthe prompt right, that that
could maybe perhaps diminish ourcapability with imagination over
time. I might assume,
Adam Zeman (38:39):
yeah, yeah, that's that's a danger, but there is a
risk then, that that that ourassistance will take over, which
we probably don't want to havehappen, and also I don't think
we want to sacrifice thesatisfactions of creativity. So
(39:04):
we're all creative to somedegree, and I think most of us
will have experience of, forexample, the flow state in which
we are we're engaged in a taskwhich matches our abilities
closely, which gives us right,just the right degree of
(39:24):
challenge, and which allows usto forget ourselves in the in
the in the the process ofcreation, in the case of
creativity, or in, in in, ofcourse, flow experiences can
also carry in other contexts,like like as in sport, but
(39:45):
certainly, creativity oftengives rise to to flow states. Or
the creative process gives riseto flow states, which is
something people enjoy andwouldn't want to lose people
also wouldn't want to lose theirsense of excitement at their at
the ideas they're working withand the creations they come up
(40:05):
with. So shivers down the spineare the target of a one of my
favourite scientific studies inthis whole. Uh, area of
research. So there was a studyby Canadian neuroscientist
Robert Sara, who is an organist,who was working with a postdoc
called Anne blood, who turnedout to be a rock drummer. And
(40:28):
the two of them clearly shared alove of music, but they liked
very different kinds of music,and they realised that one of
the things they had in commonwas that they both got chills,
shivers down the spine when theywere when they were listening to
music, and they did a wonderfulbrain imaging study in which
they showed that passages ofmusic, which give us shivers
down the spine, essentially turna key in the lock of the reward
(40:50):
system. They activate, amongothers, just the regions of the
brain that are activated byeating good chocolate. And
suddenly I got quite a good Igot my my share of shivers down
the spine, right writing thisbook and reading around, and I
(41:10):
wouldn't want to have to foregothose. So I think we, we, we
need to keep going in ourcreative
Jean Gomes (41:19):
endeavours. When we we think about organisations,
they typically are aboutcreating predictable, reliable
outcomes. Imagination isprobably not highly required. Or
you know, when you ask peopleyou know, is your job to be
creative, most people will say,No, it's not. Yet they get a
(41:42):
paradoxical call for action,which is, we need more
creativity. We need moreinnovation. But they're actually
not cultivating that. If youwere advising a group of
business people about how tokind of practically harness
imagination to develop it. Whatare the kind of tips and
guidance you would give people
Adam Zeman (42:03):
so nice, I take the point that there's always
something slightly subversiveabout imagination, isn't there?
You run the risk of overturningthe well worn ways of doing
things which can be can bedisconcerting, but probably
worthwhile. So I guess somesimple tips would include
(42:27):
creating a bit of mental spaceto allow ideas to will up
because it does seem that ifyou're very busy, you're less
likely, if you keep yourselfvery busy, you're you're less
(42:47):
likely to have a creativeinsight than if you, at least
from time to time, give youryour mind some, some, some, some
space and time in which to comeup with interesting ideas you
you would want to listen widelyto the people you're working
(43:11):
with. So Don't, don't assumethat the best ideas are going to
come from your more seniorcolleagues, because that won't
necessarily be the case. Greatideas can come from unexpected
places, and it's probably a goodidea to harvest as many ideas at
(43:37):
an early stage as possible, andthen to sort through them later.
So So create, create a space beopen minded about the
possibilities that are beingraised. Harvest as many as you
can
Scott Allender (43:56):
in creating that space, sort of really wanting to
harness the power of thecollective, right? So I'm
thinking of leaders listeningright now and building on this
idea. Are there conditions thatleaders should be creating so
that their team members have thebest chance of tapping into
their own imagination to the getthose ideas that you want,
right? You said genius comesfrom everywhere, which is true.
(44:19):
But how do we create thoseconditions for people to tap
into their imaginations? It'shelpful
Adam Zeman (44:24):
to have a critical mass of people, because people
seem to stimulate one another.
Yes, I think I say in the bookthat isolationism is a kind of
perfect antidote to creativity.
You want. You want to bringpeople together in reasonable
numbers. You want to make itclear that their ideas are going
(44:44):
to be valued. And to, as I'vesaid, Give them space to to come
up with them, and give them theconfidence to to speak. So
something that struck me inmedicine over the years is that
it's actually quite hard tocreate conditions in which
(45:05):
people really believe that anyquestion can be asked. In fact,
I've only encountered it once ortwice. People are generally or
very often, in. Professionalcontacts a bit defensive, a bit
a bit careful, a bit cautious.
So creating a climate in whichpeople feel that the the asking
of difficult questions and theproposing of interesting ideas
(45:28):
is is for the good rather thandangerous feature. Challenging.
Creating that sort ofenvironment is hard but, but
very well worth. Well worthdoing. You want to persuade
everyone that their ideas aregoing to be heard, so don't,
don't discourage people who areyounger or more junior in the
(45:49):
organisation. You so I guess, Iguess, I guess those things
create, create space, givepeople confidence that they that
any questions can be asked, anyidea can be raised, they won't
be judged for speaking. Andcreate, relatively creators
(46:20):
level as democratic, a anorganisation for this purpose as
possible.
Jean Gomes (46:30):
So you've written about consciousness and
imagination. What's next foryou?
Adam Zeman (46:34):
There are a couple of books I'd like to write which
link with the book you've justread. So I think the A Fantasia,
hyper Fantasia spectrum is areally fascinating one. It's
unlocked all sorts of avenues,all sorts of doors. So I'd like
to write a book that's focusedon that spectrum. And I think,
(46:55):
among other things, it relatesto two interestingly contrasting
tendencies in human thought. Oneis to think in more abstract,
semantic, schematic ways aboutthe world, which is perhaps what
scientists tend to do. The otheris to think in more experience,
(47:16):
near experience, rich ways ofthinking about the world, which
is what artists, I think, tendto do. So I'd like to do that.
I'd like to write a book aboutadvertisement, aphentasia. In
fact, that's what I'm planningto work on next. I've always
been fascinated by what isdistinctive about us as human
(47:38):
beings, and I'd quite like towrite something about that. And
I think the answer is, as isoften the case, no one thing.
It's a very complicated story,and I keep a little notebook in
which I jot down the featureswhich are alleged to be the
distinctive mark of mark of manand woman, if you like. I think
(48:00):
putting them together would befun. So those are my next two
projects. And then I if I havetime, I'd quite like to write
something about neurology andhow we get diagnoses right and
wrong in neurology, but that's amore, more specifically
professional book, I guess,excellent.
Jean Gomes (48:18):
Well, we really look forward to seeing you on your
next work, because you know thatyour books are incredibly
enjoyable and informative. Soreally appreciate you spending
time with us.
Adam Zeman (48:30):
Okay, thank you very much. I've really enjoyed the
conversation.
Scott Allender (48:33):
Thank you, Adam and folks make sure you get your
copy of the shape of thingsunseen if you want to explore
and learn more about this topic.
And until next time, rememberthe world is evolving. Arjun,
Imagination is low down on the priorities for
today's time poor executivesconsume meetings and approvals,
the coming wave of automationinduced change will go far
beyond the downsizing that'scurrently taking place in many
corporates the scarce commodityof imagination will increasingly
separate those organisations whocan envisage and build wholly
(00:42):
new futures from those whocontinue to double down and
defend their existing businessmodels. We're perhaps months
away from the first billiondollar unicorns that have one or
two people running them, ifthat's not an incentive to wake
up and see the need for buildingimagination engines in your
organisations. Led from the top,what is
(01:04):
in this show, we talked to AdamZeman about his latest book, The
shape of things unseen, whichgets us to rethink imagination,
not just as a creative process,but as a means to orientate
ourselves to the world and itsfuture possibilities. Tune in to
an important conversation on theevolving leader.
Scott Allender (01:26):
Hi folks.
Welcome to the evolving leader,the show born from the belief
that we need deeper, moreaccountable and more human
leadership to confront theworld's biggest challenges. I'm
Scott Allender, along with JeanGomes, and today we're going to
have an amazing conversation,because we are joined by Adam
Zeman. Adam is Honorary FellowCentre for clinical Brain
Sciences at the University ofEdinburgh, an honorary professor
(01:48):
of neurology at the Universityof Exeter, and he was brought up
in London, and after earning adegree in philosophy and
psychology, he trained inmedicine at Oxford University
Medical School. His earlierbooks include consciousness, a
user's guide, a portrait of thebrain, and is co author of
epilepsy and memory. But todaywe're here to discuss his latest
(02:11):
book, The shape of thingsunseen, which gets us to rethink
imagination, not just as acreative process, but as the
means to plan, read and a hostof other ways in which we can
experience the world. Adam,welcome to the evolving leader.
Adam Zeman (02:26):
Thank you very much for having me.
Scott Allender (02:29):
Adam, it may seem blindingly obvious, but
what is imagination? Well,that's not such an easy question
to answer, but the sense ofimagination that I had,
particularly in mind in thisbook, was the sense in which it
means our capacity to detachourselves from the here and now,
recollect the past, anticipatethe future, enter the virtual
worlds created by artists andscientists.
Adam Zeman (02:51):
So that's a rather high level sense of imagination.
I think it can be used in avariety of other ways. It can be
used in the sense of ourcapacity to form an image, which
could be the image on yourretina, or the image of the
world around you, or the imageof something that's absent, so
the apple that you reading anhour ago, or your breakfast
table as you as you left it thismorning. So it's it's a it's not
(03:16):
a term of science. It's anambiguous term. It's important
to be clear which sense one hasin mind when one's trying to
make sense of it. But yes, I hadin mind that very broad sense of
imagination, in which is thatcapacity that allows us to
detach ourselves, ourselves fromthe here and now, which I think
is a rather fundamental humancapacity, if you were looking
for a psychological capacitywhich is particularly
(03:36):
distinctive in Homo sapiens. Ithink it would arguably be that
one we live much of our lives inour heads as a result. And
given, given that description,it says encompass a fairly broad
range of mental processes, and,you know, diversity of human
nature. I mean, is it fair tosay that imagination, therefore,
could look very different todifferent people in terms of,
(03:58):
you know, that inner canvas,that inner way of thinking about
things? Yeah, absolutely. So ifwe, if you, think particularly
about sensory imagery. So that'sthe ability to represent things
in their absence as they mightappear to you if they were
present. So imagining that thatApple or your best friend's
face, that seems to be extremelyvariable from person to person.
(04:21):
So I've spent quite a bit oftime over the last 10 years
exploring the rather fascinatingphenomenon of a Fantasia. So
this is the lack of the lack ofa mind's eye, and it seems that
about 4% of people simply don't,don't visualise at all. They
they at a certain point in theirdevelopment, they realise that
when other people speak aboutthe mind's eye, they are talking
(04:41):
about the capacity to have anexperience that really is
somewhat visual. And up tillthat point, they'd always
assumed that this was just justa metaphor. So they can think
perfectly well about an apple inits absence, or a breakfast
table in its absence, butthey've never been able to
visualise it. And it turns outthat people without Fantasia,
who can't visualise, quite oftenlack or have very thin sensory
imagery across the board, so notmuch of a mind's ear or a mind's
(05:04):
fingertip, whereas there areothers who we've described as
having hyperphantasia, for whomvisualisation is as vivid as
real seeing and they for.
Example, quite often havedifficulty in being sure whether
they'd imagine something orthey've really seen it, whether
it's really whether it reallyhappened.
Scott Allender (05:21):
Actually have a family member that has the I
can't pronounce what you justsaid, but the inability to
imagine division. Yeah, isthere? Is there a in your
research and your studies andwhat you in this whole topic,
did you find that what's thewhat determines the scale for
people? Like, is there, like, Isthere things happening in the
(05:44):
brain, or what's going on in thebody? Like, what's happening for
people to have these sort ofdifferent levels of being able
to imagine?
Adam Zeman (05:50):
So that's really work in progress. I mean, it
does, it does seem that this isa these differences are real
differences, not just anartefact of misdescription. Say.
So there's nice work, forexample, showing that if you are
a visualizer and you imaginelooking into the sun or looking
(06:10):
into a bright room, your pupilsconstrict, which doesn't,
doesn't happen in people with afantasy. If you read somebody
with imagery very scary story,they will tend to sweat. People
with a Fantasia don't. And theexplanation is probably that you
need imagery to mediate betweenthe story and the and the gut
(06:33):
response. What the underlyingdifference is in the brain is a
really interesting question, andthere have been half a dozen
papers over the last year onexactly that. It looks as if,
interestingly, people withaphantasia do activate visual
regions of the brain when theythink about the appearances of
(06:54):
things, which is what peoplewith imagery do. But there seem
to be differences inconnectivity in the brain, which
are probably relevant tounderstanding the difference
between people with vividimagery and people who like it.
And it may also be that therepresentations in visual areas
are rather different in peoplewith a Fantasia. So they the the
(07:18):
way the brain is activated whenthey visualise is less similar
to the way it's activated whenthey see things than it is in
people with vivid imagery, ifthat makes sense. So there's a
there's more overlap betweenimagery and perception and
people with vivid imagery thanthere is in people who who have
thinner, thin imagery or lackit. But as I say, work, work in
progress. When you knew
Jean Gomes (07:41):
talking earlier, and you said when you were asked to
visualise a face, for example,and immediately my brain is
going to try and visualise mymum, actually, who passed a few
years ago. And the differencebetween that kind of day dreamy
type of imagination where thingsjust pop into your head, really
fully formed, versus you tell meto think of something, and I
(08:01):
find it struck. I struggle to dothat. What are the conditions
for kind of mobilisingimagination, intentionally
versus reactively?
Adam Zeman (08:12):
Yeah, no, that's a really interesting question, is
this, and you're right, thatmuch of the work done by
psychologists has involved therather artificial phenomenon of
voluntary, deliberateimagination. So think of an
apple, which is not somethingwhere we're doing constantly.
That's that's going to be a verytop down task, isn't it? You're
going to use regions of thebrain that are involved in
(08:32):
cognitive control to driveregions of the brain that are
involved involved in sensation.
So visualisation has beendescribed as vision in reverse.
Normally, there's informationstreaming in through the senses,
activating visual areas, leadingto recognition. When you
visualise deliberately, you'resort of doing the opposite. So
that's a highly deliberate,voluntary, rather artificial
setup. Contrast that with whathappens when you're reading a
(08:57):
novel. So many people, whenthey're reading a descriptive
passage in a novel will formmore or less vivid image of
what's going on. And that'sthat's not top down in the same
sense as the previous task, theimagery is somehow being
orchestrated by the the wordsyou're reading and the images
form involuntarily. It seemsthat both those kinds of imagery
(09:18):
are probably lacking in peoplewith a Fantasia. But then
there's another kind of imagerywhich happens in our dreams,
which is, of course,involuntary, very vivid, with a
hallucinatory or delusionalquality. So we think we're
really there, and really ratherfascinatingly, people, most
people with aphantasia Do dreamvisually. So there's a, there's
a dissociation between betweenvoluntary and involuntary, or I
(09:39):
think rather between wakeful anddream imagery. Dream Dream
imagery representing a, I guess,the kind of extreme form of
involuntary imagery on thatspectrum. So I think it seems
that every kind of sensoryimagery is going to involve
activity in sensory areas in thebrain, but you can generate that
(10:01):
activity by by very differentroutes, by very deliberate
route, when you're asked tovisualise an apple by a more
relaxed route. When you'rereading a novel, and then by a
kind of bottom up, entirelyinvoluntary route, when while
you're dreaming,
Jean Gomes (10:22):
when you're walking or, you know, in the shower or
something, and your brain issort of idling, and you tend to
generate lots of kind ofunbidden thoughts and
imagination. What's going onthere that's different from from
the other aspects you've justdescribed.
Adam Zeman (10:36):
Yeah, yeah. So I think this is a really, really
interesting area, and it, I mustit's, it's an area in which
discoveries over the last 20 or30 years have made sense of
things that just were verydifficult to understand in
neurological terms when I cameinto neurology. And I think they
are, they're fundamental toimagination in the sense in the
(10:58):
sense of creativity. So ourability to create things that
are to make things that are bothnew and useful, which is how
creativity is generally defined,depends to a substantial degree
on a kind of spontaneity that wehave come to understand better
through these discoveries overthe last 20 or 30 years, and
(11:18):
there are quite a number of niceexamples. So let me, let me give
you the example of replay. Sothis is a fascinating
phenomenon, which was discoveredfirst in rats, but turns out to
occur in people too. If you gofor a walk in a new place,
whether you're a rat or aperson, you will begin to lay
(11:39):
down a memory of its spatiallayout. And it turns out that
over the period after your walk,the brain will replay the route,
particularly in periods ofrestfulness, when you're when
you're idling and in sleep, andto some extent, but probably to
(12:03):
a great extent, that process isan unconscious one, but we know
that it's kind of ticking awayin the background, and it might
be the explanation for some ofthose mysterious, Spontaneous
images that appear in our heads.
Don't know whether you have mypartner calls them Stuttgart
station moments. It's when, whena place that you haven't thought
about or visited for ages justcomes into your into your mind,
completely out of the out of theblue. So replay is one example
(12:26):
of the of the the ceaseless,spontaneous activity the brain
occurring in the in thebackground of our lives, another
night, another nice example ofspontaneous activity comes from
studies of what's been calledthe the brain's resting state.
So brain imaging studies, untilabout 20 years ago, always
(12:51):
involved giving people a task,and then you'd see what happens
in the brain when you'reperforming that task, as opposed
to when you're resting or whenyou're performing some other
task. But it turns out that ifpeople just lie in a scanner,
the brain is constantly active,and it's possible to use
statistical techniques to pullout networks within the resting
(13:13):
brain. So not surprisingly,there's a group of visual areas
which talk to one another and agroup of motor areas involved in
controlling movement which talkto one another. But there are
also networks which are ratherless obvious, which have been
identified using this approach.
And perhaps the most interestingis the default mode network, and
(13:35):
it's so called because this isthe set of regions which is
especially active in the restingbrain. It's level activity
stands out above the background.
And this set of regions turnsout to be involved essentially
in the things that we dointuitively when we daydream. So
it's involved in thinking aboutthe past, anticipating the
future, thinking about otherminds, you know, the person who
(13:56):
offended you yesterday, thinkingabout some slightly tricky moral
decision that you have to take.
So it is, this is a bit of acaricature, but it is. It is, in
a sense, a daydreaming networkthat becomes especially active
when you when your mind isidling. And it's not, not a huge
(14:17):
leap, I think, to suspect thatthat notebook is likely to be
involved in in creativity. Icould give other examples.
There's, there means nicestudies of insight. So there are
problems which, which you cansolve, either in a deliberate
fashion or in a kind ofspontaneous, insightful fashion.
(14:39):
So for example, if I ask youwhat single word unites tree,
pine and source, it's veryunlikely to come to you, but
Apple is the common denominator,pineapple, apple tree, Apple
source. Now you can arrive atApple by thinking about it hard
(15:03):
for a long time and runningthrough alternatives, but people
will sometimes have a moment ofillumination, a moment of
insight. And it turns out thatthat moment of insight, which
you can study in a in a brainscanner, has a particular. A
neural signature, interestingly,involving a burst of activity
not on the left side of thebrain, which is classically
involved in language, but on theright side of the brain, where
meanings are rather morevaguely, loosely represented. So
(15:28):
just the kind of representationthat you need to be able to to
come up with the remoteassociate of it's called of the
three items that were presented.
So we're kind of beginning todevelop an understanding of the
the processes which take place,in some sense below the radar in
the brain, but which are, are, Ithink, absolutely crucial for
(15:49):
creativity, not, of course, thatcreativity depends just on
spontaneity, as as I explainedin the book, I think it create.
It depends critically on veryhigh levels of skill, so very
few creative human creativeachievements that that don't
occur as a result of trainingand development of skill and
cognitive control is alsoinvolved. Creativity, I think,
(16:13):
depends on a kind of interestingdance between spontaneity,
control and and training.
Scott Allender (16:24):
So is it fair to say that imagination is sort of
our default setting over sort ofrational processes? Yeah.
Adam Zeman (16:31):
I mean, certainly that's, that's what the resting
state work suggests, yep, yes. Imean, daydreaming seems to be a
very natural mode for the humanbrain. And there are those
lovely studies showing that ifyou sample experience by getting
a buzzer to ring in somebody'spocket at random intervals
between a quarter and a half thetime, our minds are wondering
(16:54):
and we're daydreaming. And infact, the most common content of
the conscious mind is not thehere and now. It's not the
immediate perceptual world. It'sit's imagery.
Scott Allender (17:09):
How does all this sort of help us think
differently about the roles weplay in our lives as leaders and
partners, and all the roles weplay like, how does, how does
this sort of understanding ofimagination? What? What can it
do for us?
Adam Zeman (17:24):
I think it can give us a kind of renewed respect for
the complexity and also thegenerativity of our own minds.
So as as the neuroscientistSandile Seth has put it rather
nicely, our experience is moreinside out than it is outside
(17:45):
in. You know, where I thinkthat's a that's an important
message from contemporaryneuroscience, that that we are.
We're constantly predicting theworld into being, and much of
our experience depends on ourpriors, on assumptions we make
about the about the world, and Iguess it helps us to understand
(18:10):
as as a result of what I've justsaid. It helps us to understand
differences of perspectivebetter than we otherwise might.
We are We are creatures ofculture, where we're created by
our education and exposure tothe cultural world around us.
(18:32):
What is one of the things that'smost distinct about the human
brain is it's huge. Is its hugestorage space for difference. We
are all very different from oneanother, but both individually
and across cultures, we shouldrespect those differences
because because Manners makethman and our traditions are
(18:53):
hugely important. But I thinkthis new science helps us to
understand that thesedifferences are also very
arbitrary. So it's a very strongargument against fundamentalism
of any kind, in my view. Youknow, yes, you you must respect
difference, but, but we shouldalso acknowledge that our own
(19:14):
take on the world is unlikely tobe the only privileged one that
gives us the one and only trueview of things. I wanted to
write an article for a long timecalled you do not belong to the
chosen people, but
Jean Gomes (19:32):
pick your moment for that one.
Scott Allender (19:35):
Good title.
Jean Gomes (19:39):
You know, when you write a book, and this is a this
is a wonderful book to take onholiday with you, I think
because it gives you a chance tokind of think about a lot of
things in a different way. Whatwhat in that process was most
surprising to you, either aboutresearch that you had come
across that made you think aboutthings differently, or something
(20:01):
you learn about yourself in inthis or you re evaluated
yourself through the process ofdoing it.
Adam Zeman (20:08):
Yeah, that's a very good question. I mean, certainly
one of the I. Best reasons forwriting a book is that it
enables you to find out about asubject to read widely in the
and the task of explaining whatyou've discovered to others is a
(20:29):
useful discipline. I felt thatin this book, I was, in a sense,
repaying debts. So I've had aI've taken a slightly unusual
intellectual journey, and then Ireally started out life, mainly
interested in the arts, and thenfound my way to science through
(20:49):
psychology, and that took me tothe brain. And I was delighted
to discover the brain, becauseit it seemed to me that what I
was learning about the brain, tosome extent, validated the study
of subjectivity, which I'dbecome rather dubious about. I'd
(21:10):
begun to distrust my reactionsas a as a reader or an
appreciator, appreciator of art,what I learned about the brain
helped to to kind of renew my myconfidence in those reactions,
because it seemed that therewere discoverable correlates
between subjective experienceand objective happenings in the
(21:33):
Brain. So I guess overall,that's been my main, my main
source of fulfilment in thisline of work, that I've taken a
journey from the from the artsto the sciences and back again,
and what I've discovered aboutthe brain has helped to restore
(21:59):
my confidence in in in the thekind of appreciative in my
appreciative sensibilities, ifyou like, with with regard to
the arts, I'm wondering whetherthere's anything In the course
of writing the book thatparticularly surprised me. I
(22:19):
think, I mean, this may, thismay sound slightly lame, but I
think what the book, what theprocess of writing the book, did
for me particularly, was toreinforce the hunches that I
began with. So I suppose youcould, you could write a book
with a with an idea that feelsinteresting, and as you read and
think you might come to theconclusion that this wasn't a
(22:42):
good you didn't start in theright place. But, but actually,
I I felt that the the four ideaswhich I began with were actually
borne out by by what Idiscovered. So those four ideas
are that, first of all, that welive much of a life in our
heads, as we've been discussing,that seems to be very
characteristic about about acharacteristic thing about
people. Secondly, that becomes alittle less puzzling when you
(23:07):
appreciate that actually all ourexperience comes from our heads.
And that was a that was a viewthat all my reading and thinking
about psychology had brought meto. But nevertheless, it's a,
it's, it's quite a startlingview. So it's, it's, I was
(23:27):
reassured to find not only thatthe evidence pointed that way,
but also that a lot ofcontemporary thinkers believe
that then third. The third ideais that in sensory imagination,
we essentially run the brainsystems that we use when we
perceive the world offline. Sothere's a lot in common between
imagination and perception inthe brain. Kind of interesting
(23:49):
idea. And then the fourth, thefourth big idea is that what is
special about us is that we haveevolved to share what we
imagine. So I think probablymany animals may well have
imaginative experience, but theyaren't able to coordinate their
imaginative experience in theway that we can. And that, you
know, you could say, Well,that's obvious. We can talk to
(24:12):
each other. No animals can dothat. And that's true. But I
think this, our ability to talkto each other actually rests on
a deeper ability to share ourminds, which has evolved over
the course of the last fewmillion years, in which you can
you can see developing ininfants and small children who
are pre linguistic or only inthe very early stage, stages of
(24:35):
language. It's really thatability to share our minds that
language rests on, depends on.
So those, those are the fourideas that I started out with. I
might have ended up doubtingthem, and actually I I was
pleased to find that I thinkthey're true. Any of them
individually is original either,but it was fun to bring them
together.
Jean Gomes (24:56):
No, well, I think, I mean, it's very interesting
listening to how an author and aresearcher actually goes through
the thought processes and ofwriting a book, because it was,
we all know it's not an easything to do, so a lot of people
are interested not just in thework itself, but actually the
process. Of the work. Yeah, the
Adam Zeman (25:15):
there was a, there's a funny postscript to that,
which is that the this booklived with me during the
pandemic. So I had quite, I hadmore time for it, I guess, than
than I'd expected, in a way. Andthe publisher had commissioned
100,000 words, and I delivered150,000 and I thought they'd be
delighted that this was sort ofthree for two, but, but no, so I
then, I then had to shed 50,000words, which was
Scott Allender (25:39):
not they couldn't imagine a big book. Can
we? Can we build on some ofthese ideas from a bias
perspective and some pitfallsaround that? So this sort of
living in our head inside outpicture of reality. How do we
then challenge our ownassumptions and confront our own
(26:01):
biases and and get honest aboutthe way that our depiction of
reality, our imaginations andconstructs might be, you know,
creating adverse impact in waysthat we don't intend?
Adam Zeman (26:14):
I think that's a that's a very, very important
question, isn't it, politicallyand societally? I'll begin with
just a couple of anecdotes. Ithink it's not too hard to
change your take on the world ifyou are willing to take a plunge
(26:34):
to expose yourself to somethingnew. So I've had two specific
experience of this, experiencesof this, relatively trivial
ones, in a sense. But one isthat as a teenager, I used
occasionally to hear Indianmusic on the radio. I just
couldn't understand how anybodycould want to listen to this
discordant jangle of sound. Andthen when I was a student, I
just happened, I can't quiteremember how I just happened to
(26:55):
go along to hear Ravi Shankarplaying. Shankar playing in
Oxford town hall with somedancers and drummers, and I was
completely captivated, and thenbegan listening to Indian music.
And it doesn't it didn't takevery long for that discordant
jangle to become somethingextremely, extraordinarily
beautiful and exciting. But ittook a it took a particular
(27:16):
exposure, I guess, to allow meto take that step. And the other
experience was going to Kenyafor my medical elective. As a
medical student, I spent fourmonths in Western Kenya, and
when I arrived in my MissionHospital, I was surrounded by a
sea of faces I couldn'tdistinguish from one another. It
(27:36):
took about a month, I guess, forthose faces to become as easily
distinguished as any faces wereat home. And then when I came
back to London, I kind of wantedto shake hands with every dark
face I met on the street,because of the very strong sense
of affinity I developed. So thatwas a very dramatic experience
of perspective change throughthrough simple sensory exposure.
(28:00):
I've had a bit of experience asan academic of multidisciplinary
work, where you are trying totackle a project, which people
from different disciplinesapproach in very different ways.
Sometimes those projects works.
Sometimes they don't. I thinkthey will only work if you spend
some time getting to know eachother, if you like each other,
(28:23):
and if you're prepared to work abit to learn how, learn a bit
about the the approach taken bythe the others. And I would have
thought that that general, thosegeneral principles, must apply
more broadly. So we we have totake a bit of time to to get to
know each other and get to knoweach other's points of view. I
don't think there are anyshortcuts, but that's that's
(28:45):
likely to be helpful inovercoming prejudice. I'm, you
know, I think tribalism isalmost comes very naturally to
people. I think we're naturallytribal. I'm naturally very
tribal. I quite often have havethe experience of discounting
somebody or discountingsomebody's point of view,
because I just they just don't,you know, it's not, not what I'm
(29:06):
used to. And then, you know,little while later, you discover
great richness in that person orin that person's point of view.
So the way I mean this may sounda bit trite, but the way I've
kind of summarised this tomyself recently is that one of
the really distinctive thingsabout us is that we are all all
very different from one another,but an equally important thing
(29:30):
about us is that we're allpretty much the same, and you
have to hold those two, thosetwo ideas, in in mind, I think,
in your dealings with others,if, if at all possible,
Sara Deschamps (29:47):
welcome back to the evolving leader podcast. As
always, if you enjoy what youhear, then please share the
podcast across your network, andalso leave us a rating and a
review. Now let's get back tothe conversation.
Jean Gomes (30:01):
Our imagination can can run wild, and it can
sometimes overwhelm us. What Whydoes this happen? How does it
work?
Adam Zeman (30:09):
Taking a step back to the idea that perception,
that our experience of theworld. World is is, in a sense,
more inside out than it isoutside, in that it's that it's
generative, that where that weoccupy live in a world and
imagined world. So that onepsychologist, Chris Fitz, has
described our experience theworld as a kind of controlled
(30:30):
hallucination. We hallucinate aworld which, fortunately, most
of the time corresponds toreality. So if all that is true,
then it's not hard to see howsometimes we can lose touch with
with reality. We the checks andbalances which most of the time
allow us to bring our thegenerative processes which
(30:55):
produce our experience into linewith reality. From time to time,
there's those checks andbalances are going to fail. So I
give a wide range of examples inthe book of this happening. So
to take one familiar examplethat would be familiar to many
(31:16):
people, hallucinations areextremely common after
bereavement, so many people wholose a spouse with whom they've
lived for decades will, fromtime to time, hear or see or be
touched by that person who havea very strong sense of That
person's presence. And ofcourse, very few predictions are
(31:37):
as strong if you've lived withsomebody for 30 years as the
prediction that that that personis going to be sitting in the
armchair when you open the dooror be there when you when you
roll over in bed. So it makesperfect sense that from time to
time, expectation will become sostrong that it actually turns
into reality for for a moment.
So that would be, that's, that'san example of a kind of everyday
(32:02):
hallucination. And there aremany similar examples from
situations in which people aredeprived of normal input. So the
Charles Bonnet syndrome is asyndrome in which people who
lose vision, usually late inlife, hallucinate vividly. It's
(32:23):
quite common. It occurs inperhaps a quarter of people who
who lose vision late in life,that they will experience formed
hallucinations. They don'tgenerally talk about them
because they're perfectly awarethat they're not real. They
don't want to be thought of ascrazy. But again, this is an
example of the generative brainat work having lost one of its
(32:45):
normal checks and balances,which is input from the visual
world. I mean, in that context,it seems almost as if sensory
input is inhibitory rather thanexcitatory. What it's doing is
to kind of damp down the brain'stendency to to generate
experience. And when you whenyou lose that input, the brain's
(33:07):
generativity becomes very, veryclear. Prison there. There's a
variety of types ofhallucination, which we
described in people who areimprisoned or are in very
monotonous landscapes. So if youknow the Mirage, if you're
walking through a desert or likepilots, are quite prone to
hallucinations when they'redriving in very when they're
(33:29):
flying in very monotonousconditions at night, right?
Yeah.
Scott Allender (33:34):
Didn't want to know that. Yeah, that's super
interesting. Can we train ourimaginations
Adam Zeman (33:44):
so they work better for us? Yeah? I I am sure that
we can. Of course, it depends alittle on what sense of
imagination you are thinking of,but let's think of the creative
imagination. I talked to quite anumber of creative people in the
course of writing the book,researching the book, one of the
(34:05):
things that struck me was thatyou can sort of turn creative
people on and off, like a like atap, so they I don't, I don't
want to name anyoneindividually, but I talked to a
(34:26):
number of people in whom it wasclear that they was they were so
used to Using material which theworld supplied them with to
create stories, for example,that this happened almost
automatically as a result of akind of lifelong cultivation of
that particular creative habit.
So that's not, not in the leastto say that their creativity
(34:51):
isn't skillful. Indeed, it, Ithink it's precisely to say that
it is skillful, but it, but itbecomes a such a such a highly
trained skill that rather littleeffort sometimes is needed to
drive it so. A question has beenraised whether people who lack
(35:15):
imagery could train their visualimagination. That seems to be
difficult. So many people I'vespoken to have tried, but it's
rather as if there were somebiological obstacle in their
way. They seem to find it veryhard to cultivate imagery. But
my guess is that just about anypsych with with some exceptions,
(35:37):
people for whom there might besome biological logical
obstacle, just about anypsychological capacity is going
to be like a muscle. It will, itwill be to some degree,
trainable. And I'm sure thatthis is true of imagination. I
came across a number ofinteresting tricks that people
have used to make the most oftheir imagination. So Robert
Louis Stevenson, for example,was aware that many of his
(36:03):
better ideas came to him on theverge of sleep. So he used to
rest with his elbow on a tableso that if he if he dropped off
for a moment, his head wouldfall forward, and he would then
wake just at the moment ofdropping into sleep, which might
deliver an idea. And ThomasEdison, of the night bulb used
to hold a weight in his hand sothat at the moment he nodded
(36:25):
off, the weight would drop andhe would be woken in the same in
the same state. So that'sthat's, I guess, training
yourself to to make the most ofspontaneous gifts from from the
from the unconscious.
Jean Gomes (36:39):
Yeah, I think Salvador Dali did that all as
well. Didn't he had that he usedto yes, that set of keys. That's
right, yeah, to get that liminalplace. Yeah. What do you think
the future of imagination is inthe sense that when the world
becomes more and more automated,does imagination take on a new
(37:03):
importance or significance inthe future of mankind?
Adam Zeman (37:08):
Well, I would say that imagination is imagination
makes us what we are really, youknow, we, we are absolutely
cultural creatures. And all ourtraditions, all our artefacts,
are the product of products ofacts active imagination. So it's
kind of he fund, utterly,absolutely fundamental our
(37:30):
capacity to to to be creativeand to to to use the form of
imagination that sustainscreativity. And I can't see that
changing. I guess that, AI, ofcourse, raises interesting
(37:51):
questions here. Is it possiblethat artificial systems will,
artificial intelligence willbecome as or more creative than
we are. Doesn't seem that that'sthe case just yet, but it's a
possibility for the future.
We're certainly going to to needto get on on terms with our with
(38:13):
the AI assistance, I think it
Scott Allender (38:20):
feels like there's at least a temptation to
outsource our creativity to thelikes of chat GPT, right? Sort
of, instead of maybe spending alot of energy trying to be
creative, we sort of just put inthe prompt right, that that
could maybe perhaps diminish ourcapability with imagination over
time. I might assume,
Adam Zeman (38:39):
yeah, yeah, that's that's a danger, but there is a
risk then, that that that ourassistance will take over, which
we probably don't want to havehappen, and also I don't think
we want to sacrifice thesatisfactions of creativity. So
(39:04):
we're all creative to somedegree, and I think most of us
will have experience of, forexample, the flow state in which
we are we're engaged in a taskwhich matches our abilities
closely, which gives us right,just the right degree of
(39:24):
challenge, and which allows usto forget ourselves in the in
the in the the process ofcreation, in the case of
creativity, or in, in in, ofcourse, flow experiences can
also carry in other contexts,like like as in sport, but
(39:45):
certainly, creativity oftengives rise to to flow states. Or
the creative process gives riseto flow states, which is
something people enjoy andwouldn't want to lose people
also wouldn't want to lose theirsense of excitement at their at
the ideas they're working withand the creations they come up
(40:05):
with. So shivers down the spineare the target of a one of my
favourite scientific studies inthis whole. Uh, area of
research. So there was a studyby Canadian neuroscientist
Robert Sara, who is an organist,who was working with a postdoc
called Anne blood, who turnedout to be a rock drummer. And
(40:28):
the two of them clearly shared alove of music, but they liked
very different kinds of music,and they realised that one of
the things they had in commonwas that they both got chills,
shivers down the spine when theywere when they were listening to
music, and they did a wonderfulbrain imaging study in which
they showed that passages ofmusic, which give us shivers
down the spine, essentially turna key in the lock of the reward
(40:50):
system. They activate, amongothers, just the regions of the
brain that are activated byeating good chocolate. And
suddenly I got quite a good Igot my my share of shivers down
the spine, right writing thisbook and reading around, and I
(41:10):
wouldn't want to have to foregothose. So I think we, we, we
need to keep going in ourcreative
Jean Gomes (41:19):
endeavours. When we we think about organisations,
they typically are aboutcreating predictable, reliable
outcomes. Imagination isprobably not highly required. Or
you know, when you ask peopleyou know, is your job to be
creative, most people will say,No, it's not. Yet they get a
(41:42):
paradoxical call for action,which is, we need more
creativity. We need moreinnovation. But they're actually
not cultivating that. If youwere advising a group of
business people about how tokind of practically harness
imagination to develop it. Whatare the kind of tips and
guidance you would give people
Adam Zeman (42:03):
so nice, I take the point that there's always
something slightly subversiveabout imagination, isn't there?
You run the risk of overturningthe well worn ways of doing
things which can be can bedisconcerting, but probably
worthwhile. So I guess somesimple tips would include
(42:27):
creating a bit of mental spaceto allow ideas to will up
because it does seem that ifyou're very busy, you're less
likely, if you keep yourselfvery busy, you're you're less
(42:47):
likely to have a creativeinsight than if you, at least
from time to time, give youryour mind some, some, some, some
space and time in which to comeup with interesting ideas you
you would want to listen widelyto the people you're working
(43:11):
with. So Don't, don't assumethat the best ideas are going to
come from your more seniorcolleagues, because that won't
necessarily be the case. Greatideas can come from unexpected
places, and it's probably a goodidea to harvest as many ideas at
(43:37):
an early stage as possible, andthen to sort through them later.
So So create, create a space beopen minded about the
possibilities that are beingraised. Harvest as many as you
can
Scott Allender (43:56):
in creating that space, sort of really wanting to
harness the power of thecollective, right? So I'm
thinking of leaders listeningright now and building on this
idea. Are there conditions thatleaders should be creating so
that their team members have thebest chance of tapping into
their own imagination to the getthose ideas that you want,
right? You said genius comesfrom everywhere, which is true.
(44:19):
But how do we create thoseconditions for people to tap
into their imaginations? It'shelpful
Adam Zeman (44:24):
to have a critical mass of people, because people
seem to stimulate one another.
Yes, I think I say in the bookthat isolationism is a kind of
perfect antidote to creativity.
You want. You want to bringpeople together in reasonable
numbers. You want to make itclear that their ideas are going
(44:44):
to be valued. And to, as I'vesaid, Give them space to to come
up with them, and give them theconfidence to to speak. So
something that struck me inmedicine over the years is that
it's actually quite hard tocreate conditions in which
(45:05):
people really believe that anyquestion can be asked. In fact,
I've only encountered it once ortwice. People are generally or
very often, in. Professionalcontacts a bit defensive, a bit
a bit careful, a bit cautious.
So creating a climate in whichpeople feel that the the asking
of difficult questions and theproposing of interesting ideas
(45:28):
is is for the good rather thandangerous feature. Challenging.
Creating that sort ofenvironment is hard but, but
very well worth. Well worthdoing. You want to persuade
everyone that their ideas aregoing to be heard, so don't,
don't discourage people who areyounger or more junior in the
(45:49):
organisation. You so I guess, Iguess, I guess those things
create, create space, givepeople confidence that they that
any questions can be asked, anyidea can be raised, they won't
be judged for speaking. Andcreate, relatively creators
(46:20):
level as democratic, a anorganisation for this purpose as
possible.
Jean Gomes (46:30):
So you've written about consciousness and
imagination. What's next foryou?
Adam Zeman (46:34):
There are a couple of books I'd like to write which
link with the book you've justread. So I think the A Fantasia,
hyper Fantasia spectrum is areally fascinating one. It's
unlocked all sorts of avenues,all sorts of doors. So I'd like
to write a book that's focusedon that spectrum. And I think,
(46:55):
among other things, it relatesto two interestingly contrasting
tendencies in human thought. Oneis to think in more abstract,
semantic, schematic ways aboutthe world, which is perhaps what
scientists tend to do. The otheris to think in more experience,
(47:16):
near experience, rich ways ofthinking about the world, which
is what artists, I think, tendto do. So I'd like to do that.
I'd like to write a book aboutadvertisement, aphentasia. In
fact, that's what I'm planningto work on next. I've always
been fascinated by what isdistinctive about us as human
(47:38):
beings, and I'd quite like towrite something about that. And
I think the answer is, as isoften the case, no one thing.
It's a very complicated story,and I keep a little notebook in
which I jot down the featureswhich are alleged to be the
distinctive mark of mark of manand woman, if you like. I think
(48:00):
putting them together would befun. So those are my next two
projects. And then I if I havetime, I'd quite like to write
something about neurology andhow we get diagnoses right and
wrong in neurology, but that's amore, more specifically
professional book, I guess,excellent.
Jean Gomes (48:18):
Well, we really look forward to seeing you on your
next work, because you know thatyour books are incredibly
enjoyable and informative. Soreally appreciate you spending
time with us.
Adam Zeman (48:30):
Okay, thank you very much. I've really enjoyed the
conversation.
Scott Allender (48:33):
Thank you, Adam and folks make sure you get your
copy of the shape of thingsunseen if you want to explore
and learn more about this topic.
And until next time, rememberthe world is evolving. Arjun,
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My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com