Apparently, the brain convinces us that death affects anyone but us.
Scientists have found that our brain does everything so that we do not think about our untimely death. According to new research, the brain protects us from fear by reassuring us that this sad event will happen to someone else, not to us. “The brain refuses to accept the fact that death is inevitable,” says Professor Yair Dor-Tsiderman of Bar Lian University in Israel. "When the brain receives information that in one way or another relates to death, something tells us that this information is unreliable, that it cannot be believed."
This protective mechanism of the brain is extremely important for our well-being here and now. It can be included even in the earliest stages of our life, when we are just beginning to realize the fact that death is inevitable.
“The very moment we think about the future, we begin to realize that sooner or later we will die and that there is nothing we can do about it,” says Dor-Tsiderman. "And this, in turn, contradicts our biology, which is primarily tuned to survival."
To study our brain's perception of death, Dr. Dor-Tsiederman and colleagues conducted a study in which they developed a test to create unexpected signals in the brain. 24 volunteers were shown people's faces, including their own, and scientists monitored brain activity. Words related to death also appeared on the screen above the faces. According to the results of the experiment, it turned out that when the face of the test participant appears along with a similar word, the brain turns off the prediction system. He refuses to associate himself with death.