Why can a human think like this?

Question

For example, a person thinks of the smell of a hot dog. you can smell it, but its not there. your just thinking.

or, you think of getting hit in the eye. you can make yourself fell it, but its not happening, because your only thinking.

Why is this?

Answer 1

It's your mind playing tricks on you. idk how to explain it

Answer 2

Memory Hippocampus Thalmus among others, help you to remember what you have experienced, what you remember as a bad or good feeling, even to the point of feeling it again. The most intense of the senses is smell because the olfactory organ in the nose is so close to the brain. Some consider it an extention of the brain itself. The brain is very versatile, and the human brain is very large, relatively speaking.

Answer 3

its called imagination

Answer 4

You're experiencing empathy, like, if you go to the theater and someone in the movie breaks their leg. You're leg tingles or something. You didn't break you're leg, but you feel something there. This is empathy, we all have it, some are just more empathetic than others. And do not confuse empathy with sympathy, they are two completely different things. But why we do it...I have no idea, but it's all in our DNA. Ask Jesus, i don't know

Answer 5

When we encounter something new, we remember the name assigned to it (hook), the way it feels (touch), the way it looks (vision), the way it sounds(audition).

The brain uses the hook (that's just my term) to conjure up the other associations.  Similarly, when we see a hot dog, we can bring up all the other associations, including the hook (it's name).

Answer 6

"Memories" are stored in the brain as a series of neural connections.  Any memory is a summation of your particular observation from your five senses at that moment (sight, smell, touch, hearing, and taste).  When a memory is "released" neural connections are stimulated that allow you to remember the senses associated with the event in the first place, sometimes by a dulled replication of the event itself.  BTW, smell is the strongest stimulus to memory of the five senses.