Imagination

 is the production of sensations, feelings and thoughts informing oneself.^[1] These experiences can be re-creations of past experiences, such as vivid memories with imagined changes, or completely invented and possibly fantastic scenes.^[2] Imagination helps apply knowledge to solve problems and is fundamental to integrating experience and the learning process.^{[3][4][5][full citation needed][6]} As a way of building theory, it is called "disciplined imagination".^[7] A way of training imagination is by listening to storytelling (narrative),^[3][8] in which the exactness of the chosen words is how it can "evoke worlds".^{[9][full citation needed]}

One view of imagination links it with cognition,^[10] seeing imagination as a cognitive process used in mental functioning. It is used — in the form of visual imagery — by clinicians in psychological treatment.^[11] Imaginative thought may become associated with rational thought on the assumption that both activities involve cognitive processes that "underpin thinking about possibilities".^[12]

The cognate term, "mental imagery" may be used in psychology to denote the process of reviving in the mind recollections of objects formerly given in sense perception. Since this use of the term conflicts with that of ordinary language, some psychologists have preferred to describe this process as "imaging" or "imagery" or to speak of it as "reproductive" as opposed to "productive" or "constructive" imagination. Constructive imagination is further divided into voluntary imagination driven by the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) and involuntary imagination (LPFC-independent), such as REM sleep dreaming, daydreaming, hallucinations, and spontaneous insight.^[13] The voluntary types of imagination include integration of modifiers^[jargon], and mental rotation. Imagined images, both novel and recalled, are seen with the "mind's eye".

Imagination, however, is not considered to be exclusively a cognitive activity because it is also linked to the body and place, particularly in that it also involves setting up relationships with materials and people, precluding the sense that imagination is locked away in the head.^[14]

Imagination can be expressed through stories and writings such as fairy tales, fantasies, science fiction.^[15] Children often use such narratives and pretend play in order to exercise their imaginations. When children develop fantasy they play at two levels: first, they use role playing to act out what they have developed with their imagination, and at the second level they play again with their make-believe situation by acting as if what they have developed is an actual reality.^[16]

Olin Levi Warner, Imagination (1896). Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington, D.C.