The chosen song is Sounds of Summer by Dirks Bentley. The song makes me think about the beauty of summer and the vibrant activities that come with it. Summer time is a beautiful time. In my childhood, even though we had a lot of fun playing in season including winter, summer came with so much joy and one thing that is identical with summer is vacations. Many of our vacations happen during summer; we take time to enjoy the beautiful weather and participate in many activities. During this period, we also get to is it family and attend several celebrations, such as weddings. The song reminds me of vacations and the vibrant life of summer time.
The song ‘Sounds of Summer’ is a rock song that describes the many activities that happen during summer, the weather and the everyday life that people live during this season. The artist describes the wide open sky, the sounds of activity as would happen in the summer, and the beautiful weather of sunshine, dust, and trips to other places where people may only go during summer, like the farm and the riverbank (Sounds of Summer, 2015). The song ends by mentioning the nostalgia that comes when summer is gone (Sounds of Summer, 2015). The song shows the celebratory mood of summer; killing a couple of beers, fireworks, engines revving up, children playing and rain dripping (Sounds of Summer, 2015).
Visual imagery is the perception of something without it being physically present in reality. These images can be from memories of things that happened in the past or can be as a result of an agile imagination (Association for Psychological Science, 2013). The song creates a visual memory in my brain, of a scene during summer since the brain relates the description given on this song to summer holiday. According to a research done using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), showed that both visual imagery and perception used the same neural machinery (Ganis, Thompson, & Kosslyn, 2004). The research shows that perception and imagery are controlled by the same brain process, both occurring in the occipital and temporal areas (Ganis, Thompson, & Kosslyn, 2004). As the song played, the symbols were processed through the same parts of the brain, the brain then retrieved images from the longer-term memory storage. When the brain receives the symbol, it passes it across the hippocampus repeatedly and information is stored in the cortex (McGill University, 2014); then brain retrieves images and memories from this section when triggered by related symbols like water, and sunshine for summer holiday.
Psychologists say that visual imagery can be used in helping to “cope with upsetting occurrences, establishing desensitization hierarchies, or bettering physical performance” (Association for Psychological Science, 2013). In an article by the Association for Psychological Science, the relationship between visual imaging and mental imagery; the article postulates that “ humans visualize mental imagery by distributing visual attention to particular spaces; therefore, mental imagery is just a special type of visual attention” (Association for Psychological Science, 2013).This could indeed be true as seen in the song and the visual imagery that it triggers. The song focuses on summer, the video shows scenes of beautiful scenery, which the mind transfers to past experiences of vacation.
Visual imagery is triggered through symbols like words or pictures. It plays an important role in psychological processes in the mind, and can be used in psychotherapy to redirect the thought of an individual. The song ‘Sounds of Summer’ through its description of summers has effectively played a role in recalling summer holidays.
References
Association for Psychological Science,. (2013). Seeing and Imagining Are Different in the Brain - Association for Psychological Science. Psychologicalscience.org. Retrieved 21 July 2016, from http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/obsonline/seeing and-imagining-are-different-in-the-brain.html
Ganis, G., Thompson, W., & Kosslyn, S. (2004). Brain areas underlying visual mental imagery and visual perception: an fMRI study. Cognitive Brain Research, 20(2), 226-241. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cogbrainres.2004.02.012
McGill University,. (2014). The Brain From Top To Bottom. Thebrain.mcgill.ca. Retrieved 21 July 2016, from http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/d/d_07/d_07_cr/d_07_cr_tra/d_07_cr_tra.html
Sounds of Summer. (2015). Hollywood. From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= LuOuXRe81c
