Do you ever wonder how you feel and do certain things? How our mind functions has something to do with what we are and what we do. You might have experienced some weird feeling occasionally and asked yourself why you felt that way. You might even know that other people feel that way, too. Here’s a list of the Top 5 Psych Facts You Are NOT Aware Of to answer your puzzle.
1. ASMR
Autonomous sensory meridian response, better known as ASMR, is something that only certain people experience. For these lucky people, certain triggers create what they describe as a sort of overwhelmingly pleasant, tingling sensation that settles into the back of their head or neck.
What causes it? No clue. A 2018 study found ASMR can produce some mental and physical health benefits but didn’t find any smoking guns. There hasn’t been much research done on the phenomenon. One of the only real scientific studies out there is from Swansea University, examining the experiences of 500 people sensitive to ASMR. While they didn’t even start to get into what’s going on as far as brain activity in ASMR-sensitive people, they did find that for most of the people surveyed, it was whispering that really did the trick. So this is why ASMR videos are such a sensation on YouTube these days.
2. LUCID DREAMING
Some people are capable of lucid dreaming; the entire experience is akin to the mind creating an entirely different reality, completely separate from our normal, boring lives. When we experience lucid dreams, we’re completely aware that we’re dreaming. That’s the technical description of a lucid dream, although some people report they can make decisions and influence exactly what’s going on in the dream.
According to Beverly D’Urso, a lucid dreamer who has worked extensively with psychologists at the Lucidity Institute, she’s had lucid dreams where she’s done everything from visit the Sun to taste fire. That’s pretty impressive lucidity, especially considering most people’s dreams just involve showing up to school with no pants. Something fantastic about this is that it’s thought that there might be some practical use for it, like training our waking minds or some form of therapy, but seriously though, why waste dream control on reading textbooks?
3. THE DOORWAY EFFECT
Ever walk into another room and completely forget why you’re there? You’re not alone, and you’re, probably, not going insane; you’re just a victim of what’s called the Doorway Effect.
A way to think about it is that its bad timing, and whatever you’ve forgotten is the bit that your brain has decided is the least useful. If you’re thinking about; let’s say: picking up dog food, worrying about a presentation you’ve got at work tomorrow, wondering what you’re going to make for dinner, and going to the kitchen for a cup of coffee, your brain is likely to shove that cup of joe right off your radar.
When you change your physical environment at the same time, your mental one is changing gears, and sometimes those gears slip. You drop things. But don’t worry, it wasn’t important. It’s a form of economization of thoughts.
4. DEATH BY GPS
You hear those stories about those morons so busy following their GPS that they drive right off a cliff or into a lake, right? Well, there’s a reason for these kinds of accidents.
Our dependence on navigation systems and the resulting accidents is something called “death by GPS,” even if no one dies. It turns out that we’ve become so reliant on GPS technology, our naturally-occurring directional systems are vanishing. We’ve long known we have parts of the brain solely dedicated to directions. Brain scans of active drivers show that the taxi drivers’ gray matter expands to deal with this sheer volume of information and decreases back to “normal” levels once they retire.
Mental mapping is hard work, and there’s a whole new generation of drivers that don’t have to think about things like associating landmarks to drive to work or finding shortcuts on their own.
5. EARWORMS
Everyone seems to have their own songs that they keep repeating over and over again in their heads. This phenomenon is called “Earworms.”
Earworms happen for a surprisingly complicated reason, and part of it has to do with repetition. How many times did you hear “Hey, Macarena!” playing on the radio and then staying in your head for longer than you want to? Is it happening right now? It’s more than just that, though, as songs are one of the few things that are absolutely identical every time you hear them. Your brain already knows exactly what comes next, so it automatically follows along and continues the melody and lyrics until you start hating it so much you’d want to scoop your eardrums out with a spoon.
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