We are used to trusting our brain, but sometimes it can deceive and even substitute us, create false memories, confuse directions and even stop space.
Shoot down GPS
Probably, everyone at least once in his life lost his spatial orientation, and in a familiar place. It's like someone has abruptly turned off your internal autopilot. It happens to everyone, but this joke of the brain may have absolutely not funny reasons. In medicine, this is called “temporary loss of orientation”, when a person abruptly stops recognizing places, people, and cannot make a decision on his own. The reasons for this phenomenon, especially if it manifests itself constantly, may be pulmonary diseases or diabetes mellitus.
However, sometimes your internal navigation is not working properly because of the constant use of GPS. If you even prefer to move according to the arrow on your smartphone to the nearest store, then, according to scientists from McGill University, you will soon turn into a "navigation zombie", completely lose the ability to navigate the landscape.
Fake memories
It is easy for a person to suggest something. Almost everyone today has false memories. These are usually stories that you heard from someone, for example, about your childhood. A person practically does not remember anything from his early years, most of what he supposedly remembers is the stories of his parents and close people. For example, the story of how you were driven from the hospital and you shouted all over the street. Or how one day, at the age of four, they had a fight with a neighbor's boy.
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It is almost impossible to separate false memories from real ones. Studies have shown that people who have witnessed events may later, under the influence of incorrect information, "change" their memories. Scientists conducted an experiment in which the witnesses of a traffic accident, who claimed that the driver who did not notice the red traffic light was to blame, were divided into two groups. One of them was presented with "proof" that the light was green. After some time, both groups were re-interviewed, and those who were given false information suddenly "remembered" that the traffic light was green, and not red, as they had previously stated. Another experiment was conducted by the University of Washington. Students were asked to tell some stories from childhood, and compare them with the memories of their parents,among which one was false. As a result, about 20% of students "remembered" a false case during the second interview. Moreover, after each survey, the story acquired new details.
Make you talk nonsense
A person not only constantly "edits" his memories, but also forgets. This happens as a result of information overload in RAM, the brain simply throws out information that it considers unnecessary. This constantly puts us in an awkward position, but does not pose a serious danger. The situation changes radically if you once unsuccessfully hit your head and earned yourself a brain disorder - "Wernicke's aphasia" or "temporary loss of word memory."
Remember the episode from the movie "Bruce Almighty" when the hero of Jim Carrey with the help of divine power made the hero of Steve Carell carry an incoherent chain of words on the air? This is aphasia, when a person betrays meaningless gibberish. Moreover, the people with whom this happened, claim that their mouth, as if it was living its own life, they did not know what they would say at a given moment and realized the meaning after the fact.
Make a plagiarist
Like false memories, the brain generates false ideas. This is called cryptomnesia or "unconscious plagiarism". In other words, your brain "steals" other people's ideas and slips you under the guise of your own. After all, the main idea for survival, and its copyright is the tenth thing. High-profile examples include George Harrison, who had to pay $ 600,000 for a song he sincerely considered his own. This can happen to anyone. For example, after some time after a fierce argument and desperate defense of your position, having reworked your opponent's idea, you accept it as yours.
Cryptomnesia also manifests itself in the superposition of dreams and reality, when a person cannot remember exactly when this or that event happened to him, in a dream or in reality.
Arrange a slideshow
Imagine the following situation - you are standing on the road and waiting for a green traffic light. A minute passes, two, five, the green one has already given a start a long time ago, but instead of busy traffic, you still see a frozen street in front of you, as if someone had pressed the stop button on the "world remote control".
This "someone" is still your brain that underwent "akinetopsia" or "inability to perceive movement." The causes of the phenomenon can be different, from the effects of trauma to the side effects of taking antidepressants. A person with akinetopsia sees an immobile car as usual. If the car starts to move, it is perceived as a sequence of separately taken frames that leave behind a blurry trail. In other words, the road turns into a long exposure frame for you. Or another example, imagine you want to fill a glass. But the stream of water is motionless for you, the glass in your eyes will remain empty. In the case of akinotepsy, a person ceases to perceive the facial expressions of other people, and the face of the interlocutor, despite the sounds made, will be static, as if in a mask. In general, a horror film in reality. Fortunately, akinotepsy,extremely rare phenomenon that disappears after elimination of the cause.
Kill time
We know no more about the perception of time than about all the capabilities of the human brain. It always flows differently. For example, according to research by scientists, the course of psychological time changes if a person lives in the process of perceiving information. As a child, a child absorbs new knowledge like a sponge, and every day is filled with impressions. As they grow older, a person acts more automatically, learns less about the world and absorbs information. Therefore, over the years, we feel the acceleration of time. The perception of time can change depending on the space - in a stuffy room, it stretches "like rubber", because a person is constantly focused on what he is uncomfortable with.
But there are times when a person completely loses his sense of time. More precisely, he does not perceive the sequence of events, does not divide life into years, but years into months and days. One woman refused to admit that there is a cycle of 24 hours and 365 days. She, like everyone else, got up, had breakfast, went about business, but for her it was an indivisible moment, in other words, her life always consisted of one day. This temporal perception is called "time agnosia." By the way, this pathology of the brain "one field of the berry" with akinotepsy - a distortion of the perception of space.
Mirror others
Have you ever felt uncomfortable in your body when you heard that someone pinched a finger or broke a leg. Or, watching the action movies, they automatically grabbed onto the same place where the hero had just been wounded. This is the so-called sympathetic pain, a kind of empathy (the ability to put yourself in the shoes of another). Scientists have proven that our brains constantly copy facial expressions, sensations, symptoms of others. And all thanks to mirror neurons that are present in speech, motor, visual, associative and other areas. Why a person needs "brain mirrors" is not yet clear. Perhaps they help with learning and early development, where children learn from their parents. Or is it such special neurons that are responsible for our empathy, in general, distinguish us from dinosaurs (in other mammals, including primates,also have mirror neurons). In any case, it is to them that we owe what the people call "impressionability" - the application of what you see on yourself - pain, pregnancy syndromes and phobias.