After listening to an early beta version of a Lotimus mind journey, one listener said that the experience felt like being in a game playthrough. A twenty-something guy majoring in computational linguistics, he often de-stressed at night by watching game playthroughs, especially the one Sony created for fans of the beautiful game Journey. Familiar with the practice of watching a playthrough, he was eager to pop in his earbuds and test out the mind journey experience. A couple of listens later, he declared that he knew he’d found a new way to unwind from the stresses of a demanding academic life. “When you’re watching a game playthrough,” he said, “something in you always knows that you’re not really the avatar. But when you’re listening to a mind journey, you actually feel like the avatar.”

What’s the difference between watching the avatar and being the avatar?

Well, everything, in fact.

And science tells us why.

Several years ago, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, conducted a now-famous study in which the participants were taught a few simple, five-note chords on the piano. As their fingers moved through the exercises on the keys, Pascual-Leone measured their brain activity, noting that the circuits that control finger flexions became stronger and more pronounced as the week went along. But the surprising discovery occurred with the second group of participants, who were asked only to imagine playing the same sequence of notes on the piano. As they sat and imagined their hands on the keys, Pascual-Leone’s team noted that the same exact brain circuits lit up, confirming his hypothesis that for the brain, imagined movement triggers and strengthens the same neural circuitry as actual movement.

For mind journey listeners, what this means is that whether your travels are actual or imagined, your mind reads them as real. Moreover, because journeying invokes all your senses, your experience feels deeply embodied and authentic. It’s no surprise, then, that listeners describe mind journeying as totally real-seeming.

So, sure, hop on a game playthrough when you’re in the mood to simply witness the ramblings of your avatar.

But when you want to be the avatar? For that experience, you’ve got to slip your earbuds in or your headphones on and press ‘play.’ And when the journey begins, you’ll be the seeker, the traveler, the journeyer.

Watch the avatar? Or be the avatar?