Using Your Imagination to See Pictures in the Sky

[Music plays, birds chirp]

As you lie in the grass,

trying to make out different shapes in the passing clouds,

one cloud looks unquestionably like a rabbit.

But your buddy swears [quacks],

that same cloud looks like a duck.

But, why do you see different shapes?

There isn’t one part of the brain

assigning meaning to the images you see.

Instead, several brain regions

communicate to produce your creative interpretation — your imagination.

As you look at moving clouds,

your occipital lobe —

crucial for visual processing —

receives visual information,

helping you make out images in the sky.

Your hippocampus,

vital for learning and remembering,

helps you to interpret images from your memory.

While your amygdala, responsible for processing emotions,

connects those emotions to your memories.

Regions of your frontal lobe integrate information

coming from [zaps] these and other brain regions —

allowing us to perceive animals, objects, and faces in random images.

This ability, known as “pareidolia,” occurs

because our brains want to recognize patterns

and make meaning out of the things [screams] we see.

So, you imagine that rabbit in the clouds.

And your friend sees the duck.

We each see the world in different ways

based on our unique experiences, memories, and feelings.

So, we make different conclusions about our surroundings.

[Light splash, swoosh, light splashes]

[Music stops]