Tag Archives: brain

Aug26

not all minds that wander are lost.

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after reading this research i now see why i am happy most of the time-

i am an idle mind-wanderer.

it’s my best sport. 

Research suggests that people with freely moving thoughts are happier.

“Sometimes you just want to let your mind go free,” says Julia Kam, a cognitive neuroscientist who directs the Internal Attention Lab at the University of Calgary. Kam became interested in her subject 15 years ago as an undergraduate struggling with her own distracted thoughts during lectures. “I came into the field wanting to find a cure,” she says. But the deeper she got into research, the more she came to appreciate the freedom of an unfocused mind. “When your thoughts are just jumping from one topic to the next without an overarching theme or goal, that can be very liberating,” she says.

Researchers have found that people spend up to 50 percent of their time mind-wandering. Some internal thinking can be detrimental, especially the churning, ruminative sort often associated with depression and anxiety. Try instead to cultivate what psychologists call freely moving thoughts. Such nimble thinking might start with a yearning to see your grandmother, then careen to that feeling you get when looking down at clouds from an airplane, and then suddenly you’re pondering how deep you’d have to bore into the earth below your feet before you hit magma. Research suggests that people who do more of that type of mind-wandering are happier.

Facilitate unconstrained thinking by engaging in an easy, repetitive activity like walking; avoid it during riskier undertakings like driving. You’ll find it harder to go free-ranging if you’re myopically worried about something in your personal life, like an illness or an argument with a spouse.

For a recent study, Kam hooked subjects up for an electroencephalogram and then had them do a mundane task on a keyboard while periodically asking them about their thoughts. She was able to see, for the first time, a distinct neural marker for freely moving thoughts, which caused an increase in alpha waves in the brain’s frontal cortex. This is the same region where scientists see alpha waves in people doing creative problem-solving. We live in a culture that values work and productivity over almost everything else, but remember, your mind is yours. Make space to think in idle ways unrelated to tasks. “It can replenish you,” Kam says.

 

“i was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering.”

-steven wright

 

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credits: nytimes/sunday magazine, ‘how to let your mind wander’- malia wollan , university of calgary

Oct11

jamais vu?

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What’s the opposite of deja vu?

you may encounter these disconcerting moments from time to time -instances where you walk into a new situation and find it oddly familiar despite never having experienced it before. This common phenomenon is called déjà vu, French for “already seen.”

At its opposite is a slightly less common phenomenon — jamais vu, which translates to “never seen” in French. It’s when you’re in a familiar situation but suddenly feel as if you’re experiencing it for the first time. This could happen with a certain place, an action, or even a person. Your sense of knowing disappears despite recognizing that something has occurred before.

Imagine, for example, that you’re driving to work or to your favorite shopping spot. You turn down one lane and suddenly find yourself momentarily at a loss — “Am I supposed to turn right or left next?” you wonder, even though you’ve driven this path so many times it’s muscle memory now.

At other times, you may find yourself forgetting certain details — blanking out, or unable to remember a name you use every day. It’s that frustrating “tip of the tongue” feeling where you just can’t get the words out. These floundering moments that leave you bewildered, blindsided, and questioning your memory are perfect examples of jamais vu.

You’ve Experienced Jamais Vu Without Knowing It

If you think you’ve never experienced jamais vu, think again. Pick a word — “shampoo” — and repeat it 15 to 20 times. Does it sound odd? Does it sound fake? Has it lost all meaning? Logically, you know what shampoo is, but it becomes an unfamiliar term as you repeatedly voice it aloud.

In 2006 a study conducted by cognitive neuropsychologist Chris Moulin induced jamais vu in his study participants with this word repetition method. In the experiment, 92 volunteers wrote the word “door” 30 times in one minute. Sixty-eight percent reported symptoms of jamais vu as they began to doubt the reality of the word. Moulin went on to relate the brain fatigue with schizophrenia, likening the mental illness to a chronic and extreme form of jamais vu.

It might be easier to understand it as a glitch in the system. When you experience jamais vu, you may try to reason with yourself that the situation should be familiar, but there’s a hiccup. The part of your brain that’s supposed to be processing and logging the information, connecting it to past experiences, isn’t responding in kind, leaving you wondering how to react.

If you experience this sensation on a few rare occasions, don’t worry — it’s completely normal. If this bewildering feeling starts to happen more regularly, consider a visit to your doctor. Jamais vu can also describe symptoms of certain neurological conditions.

At the end of the day, jamais vu, like déjà vu, is a tricky phenomenon to explain, but still a normal human occurrence. The next time you pause, bewildered, during a summary of your favorite movie, or briefly panic over which turn to take while on your evening jog, remind yourself it’s probably just a moment of jamais vu.

 

 

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Source: Word Genius,

Image credit: Alexandre Ayer 

 

Dec7

Have you lost your mind?

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image

The case of 100 missing brains has been solved. The brains, missing from the university of Texas in Austin, have been found at the university of Texas in San Antonio.  T. Schallert, a professor at the Austin campus, said, “They, (the researchers at the San Antonio campus), read a media report and called to say, ‘We’ve got those brains!'”

The brains, used for research, have been AWOL since the 1990s, but their whereabouts took on a new urgency with the publication of a new book, “Malformed: Forgotten Brains of the Texas State Mental Hospital.

I am left wondering  how one walks out with 100 brains, and how ironic that they have actually been forgotten.

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Credits: Gary Larson, the far side, the detroit free press wire services