BRAIN QUIRKS YOU DIDN'T REALIZE YOU HAD
Psychology often confirms our intuitions about how our minds work, but it offers quite a few surprises as well. Although some psychology buff's will have heard a few of these before, here's a list of quirks in your brain you probably didn't realize you had:
Your short-term memory has a max capacity of seven
Humans have three forms of memory: sensory, long-term and short-term. Long-term memory is like hard-drive space, while short-term memory works like a very small RAM. This short-term memory can hold only about five to nine (average is seven) items at a time.
Chartreuse is the most visible color
Yellow-green, chartreuse, sits right in the middle of the frequencies of visible light. Your eyes have receptors for blue, green and red. Being in the middle, yellow-green triggers the most of these receptors to fire, making it easy to spot. In some cities, firetrucks have been changed from red to a yellow-green color to make them more visible.
Your subconscious is smarter than you are
Or at least more powerful. In one study, a square was assigned to a location on a computer screen through a complex pattern. After watching it, people began to get results better than chance of picking out where the square would pop up next. But when asked to consciously determine the pattern, even given a few hours, nobody could do it.
You have two nervous systems
One set controls excitation and the other controls inhibition. If you hold out your hand, you might notice minor tremors. This is caused by slight, random differences in the amount each of the two systems are firing.
Your memory isn't great either
Studies have shown that people are highly likely to misremember past events. Even worse, it is incredibly easy to suggest a memory that never happened. This is why so-called "repressed" memories should be given a lot of thought. It is far easier to suggest a memory of an event never happened, then it is to recover one that actually did.
You can perceive depth with one eye
It's a myth that depth perception is entirely the result of having two eyes. Binocular vision does assist in making a three-dimensional picture. However, most of your ability to perceive depth comes from inside your brain. It has been wired to look at angles and proportions to judge distance.
Long-term memory shuts down during sleep
The parts of the brain that transfer information to long-term memory shut down while sleeping. This is why dreams quickly fade away after you wake up. Although you may have several dreams in a night, they aren't being recorded into long-term memory. Generally only the fragments of a dream left in short-term memory have a chance to be encoded after you wake up.
You have an instant playback feature
We mentioned that humans have three forms of memory, short-term, long-term and sensory. Sensory memory is your brain's equivalent to an instant playback feature. Working for both your vision and hearing, your thalamus can resend signals a few seconds after they were originally sent.
Your short-term memory has a max capacity of seven
Humans have three forms of memory: sensory, long-term and short-term. Long-term memory is like hard-drive space, while short-term memory works like a very small RAM. This short-term memory can hold only about five to nine (average is seven) items at a time.
Chartreuse is the most visible color
Yellow-green, chartreuse, sits right in the middle of the frequencies of visible light. Your eyes have receptors for blue, green and red. Being in the middle, yellow-green triggers the most of these receptors to fire, making it easy to spot. In some cities, firetrucks have been changed from red to a yellow-green color to make them more visible.
Your subconscious is smarter than you are
Or at least more powerful. In one study, a square was assigned to a location on a computer screen through a complex pattern. After watching it, people began to get results better than chance of picking out where the square would pop up next. But when asked to consciously determine the pattern, even given a few hours, nobody could do it.
You have two nervous systems
One set controls excitation and the other controls inhibition. If you hold out your hand, you might notice minor tremors. This is caused by slight, random differences in the amount each of the two systems are firing.
Your memory isn't great either
Studies have shown that people are highly likely to misremember past events. Even worse, it is incredibly easy to suggest a memory that never happened. This is why so-called "repressed" memories should be given a lot of thought. It is far easier to suggest a memory of an event never happened, then it is to recover one that actually did.
You can perceive depth with one eye
It's a myth that depth perception is entirely the result of having two eyes. Binocular vision does assist in making a three-dimensional picture. However, most of your ability to perceive depth comes from inside your brain. It has been wired to look at angles and proportions to judge distance.
Long-term memory shuts down during sleep
The parts of the brain that transfer information to long-term memory shut down while sleeping. This is why dreams quickly fade away after you wake up. Although you may have several dreams in a night, they aren't being recorded into long-term memory. Generally only the fragments of a dream left in short-term memory have a chance to be encoded after you wake up.
You have an instant playback feature
We mentioned that humans have three forms of memory, short-term, long-term and sensory. Sensory memory is your brain's equivalent to an instant playback feature. Working for both your vision and hearing, your thalamus can resend signals a few seconds after they were originally sent.
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