Human consciousness is a real mystery with an unknown mechanism of work. Even when it comes to ourselves, we are unable to explain the phenomenon of deja vu, dreams, or answer the question of what talent is.
Prosopagnosia
Bad memory for faces is not always due to inattention. In medicine, there is the concept of "prosopagnosia" or the inability to remember faces, due to the defeat of the right-lower occipital part. A person with prosopagnosia does not mean that he does not remember faces, he does not perceive them. Such a patient is unable to determine who is approaching him - friend or foe, he does not know how to behave - to greet, smile or prepare for an attack. At one time, Lewis Carroll in the immortal "Alice Through the Looking Glass" gave an example of prosopagnosia in the person of Humpty Dumpty, who said goodbye to Alice that he would not recognize her next time, since he would not be able to distinguish her face from the faces of other people.
Prosopagnosia, especially acquired unexpectedly, can lead to social isolation of the patient. Therefore, today, special therapies have been developed that teach patients to recognize others by gait, hairstyle, shape, and voice.
Cocktail party effect
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Close people are able to recognize each other's voices even in the noisiest place. This allows a person to have the so-called "cocktail party effect" - the ability to filter noise and get the right information from any din. How this mechanism works is not clear, it is only known that it is most effectively used by people who have lived with each other for a long time. Researchers from Queens University in Ontario (Canada) tested 23 married couples between 44 and 79 years old who had been married for at least 18 years. Participants in the experiment were asked to listen to a recording of the voices of three people speaking at the same time. In some tests, one of the voices belonged to the spouses of the subjects. Each time, the listener was asked to focus on one particular voice and remember the information conveyed to them. Research has shown that every timewhen one of the speakers was the husband or wife of the test taker, the information was easier to assimilate. The spouse's voice was also best ignored when focusing on the stranger's conversation.
The head of the research group, Ingrid Johnsrud, argues that over the long years of marriage, family people tune their hearing to each other, thanks to this they manage, if necessary, to immediately distinguish the spouse's voice from others, as well as ignore it, mixing it with background noise.
In another parallel study, it was found that people with less than 5 years of dating experience are practically unable to distinguish the voices of their partners in a busy cocktail party.
Tetris effect
Have you ever dreamed about what you were doing during the day, especially if it was a monotonous activity, such as playing Tetris or collecting a Rubik's cube? Moreover, in a dream, the right decisions often came, new combinations, how did Mendeleev once dreamed of his periodic table after a long and hard work? Scientists call this the "Tetris effect" when a person devotes too much time to a certain activity, and then begins to see images characteristic of this activity in dreams, thoughts and the real world.
Little is known about this today. Scientists believe that this is not a "bell" of the body about excessive mental fatigue, but the further work of the brain on the problem that its owner is so much concerned about.
To prove this thesis, scientists from Harvard Medical School conducted an experiment: several people had to constantly play Tetris for a number of days. As a result, on the third night, some of them, according to their own statements, continued to play Tetris even in their sleep. The researchers explained this by the fact that the brain does not immediately understand the need to master a new skill. Only routine, but regular repetition makes him "turn on" the learning function. After that, he continues to work on the given problem, even when the person is doing something else, resting or sleeping.
Mirage effect
In medical terms, apophenia is a phenomenon when a person distinguishes images familiar to him where they are not. For example, the face of Elvis on a toasted toaster, the faces of loved ones on the water, or scary silhouettes in the shadows of forest trees. The term was first coined in 1958 by Klaus Konrad, who defined it as "an unmotivated vision of relationships" accompanied by a "characteristic sense of inadequate importance."
Apophenia can explain many phenomena that people like to call "paranormal" or "miracle", so further study of the issue faces complex ethical and religious problems. So far, the main scientific version says that the phenomenon is associated with the ability of the human brain to accumulate and then project the collected information onto the outside world. One of the most famous examples of apophenia is a natural formation on the surface of Mars, which everyone takes for a human face.
Innate talent
Despite the fact that the presence of talent or giftedness is considered the main criterion for selection or the key to success in a particular field, none of the scientists can say with certainty what he is, and whether he plays any role at all. People usually perceive a group of qualities under talent: attentiveness, interest and quick assimilation of information. Musically, according to researcher Diane Richardson of Baldwin-Wallace University (USA), giftedness is manifested in better rhythm perception and more sensitive hearing. But all this is compensated for by work, without which no talent will show itself.
Banal, at first glance, the truth. And yet, according to Russian researchers Meshcheryakov and Sokolyansky, talent is determined by a person's upbringing much more than genetically determined characteristics. According to scientists, it takes about ten years of continuous work to make a talent work in full force.