Pulling the trigger
Have you ever had the experience that something was on the ‘tip of your tongue’ but you couldn’t quite remember? That’s likely because you know the information exists, but you can’t quite find the right connection to trigger its recall. That’s why such memories sometimes come back later when triggered by a more relevant (but often random) stimulus. Read more »
As we have seen previously, the basis of new memories are new physical connections in the brain. The more elaborate the connections, the more meaning they have, and the more specific the context, the stronger and more long lasting is the memory. Read more »
Sensory thinking
The senses inform much of our language, as the dominant source of our experiences. We all use words related to different senses to express ourselves (I can see your point, I hear you, I was touched by a thought), and some theories (eg NLP) claim that we have different preferences for the sensory modalities (I hear what you’re saying vs I see what you’re saying). Thus, the senses truly help us to create our everyday expressions. Read more »
To perceive is to act
Perception is all about action. What we perceive is not just based on input from our senses, but also based on our expectations in a specific context or situation. Our senses work very well, but our brain integrates, interpolates and interferes with the information coming from the senses to fit the data to pre-existing models of what it thinks should happen (based on a vast databank of previous experiences). For example, our brain expects that two towers going up into the sky away from us should converge following the laws of perspective, and when they don’t (as above) this can cause unintended effects in how we perceive the world. Read more »
Making sense of the world
It’s time to get ‘tasty’ and come over all ‘touchy feely’! The senses are our connection to the outside world, through which we build a store of memories to help us predict and control our futures. The unique value of the human mind is that it makes our behaviour context sensitive, and the context is determined by what we sense around us. Read more »
In the last post, we saw that humans are susceptible to social bias (or herd mentality). Our mind does not work by itself alone, but through interactions with other minds in the immediate environment or more remotely through culture and shared values. Much of what we do is under the influence of others, often without realising, with important implications for marketing and research. Read more »
Home Economicus or Homo Sapiens?
We have seen that the majority of human behaviour is controlled outside consciousness. This is in contrast to the classical models of economics which assume a model of man as Homo Economicus who is entirely rational, always knows what (s)he wants and is capable of calculating the precise consequences of any action. We all know that this is nonsense, and recent economic events have once again highlighted the inadequacy of such models both for economics and further afield. Read more »
On autopilot
Imagine a busy housewife, with impatient kids in tow, walking through the supermarket to find fishcakes and chips (or perhaps noodles and vegetables) for the evening meal. Her mind is focused on the task in hand and finding the right items, along with trying to listen to descriptions of the school day just gone. All of us do many things (arguably most things) in our day via an internal autopilot. Whether it’s brushing our teeth, driving to work, or buying our evening meal, much of our behaviour is learnt and unconscious. Read more »
We are all ‘live wires’
How does the brain make connections? Brain scans show areas of our brain ‘lighting up’ when we make decisions (although beware that more activity doesn’t make the decision more important). But what is really going on? There is a huge amount of activity (electrical and chemical) going on within our brains. Read more »
The growing brain
As we have learnt, the brain didn’t spring into being but emerged over time. The most obvious evidence for the evolution of the brain is its structure. Firstly, our brain is quite large, but not as large as some other animals. However, relative to our body mass, the brain outweighs all our fellow creatures! Interestingly, one of the common threads between those animals with relatively larger brain sizes is that they are all very social animals. Read more »
