WORKSPACE SHAPES LIFE'S EXPERIENCES WITH MENTAL IMAGERY

WORKSPACE IS LIKE A PERSONAL TRAINER FOR YOUR MIND

It uses different types of visual stimuli to help you create mental images without even realizing it. These images stir up emotions that help you create your own unique mental pictures. These pictures then help you tackle specific problems or challenges.

Workspace uses abstract designs that can bring about the right mix of emotions. This helps improve your intuition and mental performance in the short and long run.
These emotions act as a spark that helps you create your own mental images.

The result? Your intuition becomes sharper and more precise.

Workspace’s method is personalized. It allows you to shape and reshape your mental images over and over again, without you even realizing it. These images reflect a positive outcome that’s unique to you.
After all, what works best for one person might not work the same for another.

OUR DESIGNS HAVE IMMEDIATE AND LONG-TERM EFFECTS ON HOW PEOPLE THINK AND BEHAVE

Based on observations over six months, our designs seem to have both immediate and long-term effects on how people think and behave. We’re still collecting data to fully understand how this happens.

So far, the effects seem to be linked to the theme of each space. For example, people who are drawn to the “Intense” theme are usually starting a new romantic relationship or dealing with problems in an existing one. Those who use “Intense” are often seen starting a new relationship, fixing an existing one, or finding a balance in complicated relationships.

Immediate effects include feelings of creativity and confidence in Galaxy spaces, acceptance and balance in Vintage space, being more outgoing in Classic space, inward intuition in Serene space, and increased passion in Intense. These emotions, along with unique visual cues in each space, help in creating, reshaping, and practicing mental images in a more personal and distinct way.

SIMPLE SUMMARY OF WHAT EACH PLACE OFFERS

Galaxy

Galaxy helps people feel more confident. It helps people solve problems and encourages them to take chances.

Vintage

Vintage is like a mirror, showing you things you might not have noticed before. It’s great for people who want to learn new things or stay open to new ideas.
It helps you see different points of view that you might have missed. It’s especially helpful for people who are stuck or dealing with tough problems.

Classic

Classic is where Workspace started. It’s a quiet place for outgoing people. It helps develop intuition by using parts of the brain that detect threats, leading to more realistic thinking. People who use Classic are often better at imagining events, allowing them to see multiple possible outcomes. It’s great for coming up with and developing ideas, especially for projects that benefit the community.

Serene

Serene helps you understand yourself better by using mental images to understand and accept your strengths and weaknesses.
This promotes self-discovery and development. It helps you notice patterns and details about yourself and your surroundings that you might not have noticed before.

Intense

Intense is like an emotional roller coaster, bringing out strong feelings in people. This makes the brain work faster, which is great for tasks that need to be done quickly. It’s especially useful for people dealing with relationship issues or starting a romantic journey. It’s recommended for clients looking to improve and expand their relationships. Many people face initial challenges in their relationships but often end up establishing more harmonious connections after using this space.

WORKSPACE PROMOTES MENTAL IMAGERY

In simpler terms, workspace designs use visuals with subtle differences in shapes, colors, and patterns to spark involuntary mental pictures. The effect of these visuals on later tasks depends on their “perceptual energy” or intensity.
If the visual is brief or has low contrast, it’s more likely to enhance the task, while a long-lasting or high-contrast visual might suppress it [1].

Brain imaging studies have shown that these mental pictures come from the same visual features activated when we actually see something. Many studies have created models based on the information gathered during perception and used these models to interpret mental images from brain activity. This technique, known as voxel-wise modeling and decoding (VM), was first used for mental imagery in 2006 [2].

Supporting the idea of retinotopic organization in mental imagery, models that capture retinotopic tuning during visual perception could be used to identify and possibly recreate mental images of the stimuli (see Figure 1). 



Figure 1

Patterns of activity triggered by visual perception and visual mental imagery become more alike as they progress through the processing hierarchy. The diagram illustrates an underlying principle found in fMRI literature concerning visual mental imagery.
In this depiction, the ventral stream is broadly divided into early visual areas (depicted in the shaded brain region in the left panels) that depict low-level visual features (such as edges and textures), and higher-level visual areas (depicted in the shaded region in the right panels) that represent information at the scene level and object categories. From “Mental Imagery: Functional Mechanisms and Clinical Applications” by Pearson J, Naselaris T, Holmes EA, Kosslyn SM. Trends Cogn Sci. 2015 Oct;19(10):590-602

Moreover, the anatomy of V1 has been associated with sensitivity to both perceptual orientation and location in visual space [4,5]. Similarly, the precision of mental imagery in terms of spatial orientation and location within retinotopic space is also linked to the size of V1 [6]. Notably, the size of area V1 is correlated with the precision of both mental imagery and visual perception, reinforcing the shared characteristics between the two.

Because the regions involved in visual perception closely align with those activated during mental imagery, it's not surprising that visual stimulation can impact the substance of mental imagery. The crucial role of mental imagery in governing mood, emotions, behavior, and decision-making underscores its significance.

 

References

1.
Pearson J, Naselaris T, Holmes EA, Kosslyn SM. Mental Imagery: Functional Mechanisms and Clinical Applications. Trends Cogn Sci. 2015 Oct;19(10):590-602. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2015.08.003. PMID: 26412097; PMCID: PMC4595480.

2. Thirion B. Inverse retinotopy: inferring the visual content of images from brain activation patterns. Neuroimage. 2006;33:1104–1116. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

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4. Song C. Variability in visual cortex size reflects tradeoff between local orientation sensitivity and global orientation modulation. Nat. Commun. 2013;4:2201. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

5. Song C. Neural population tuning links visual cortical anatomy to human visual perception. Neuron. 2015;85:641–656. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

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