How does our brain deceive us? Our mind deceives our own brain.
It’s easy to suggest something to a person. Today, almost everyone has false memories. Usually these are stories that you heard from someone, for example, about your childhood. A person remembers practically nothing from his early years; most of what he supposedly remembers are stories from his parents and loved ones. For example, a story about how you were taken from the maternity hospital, and you screamed throughout the street. Or how once, when I was four years old, I got into a fight with a neighbor boy. It is almost impossible to separate false memories from real ones. Research has shown that people who witness events can later “change” their memories under the influence of incorrect information. Scientists conducted an experiment in which witnesses to 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 “evidence” that the light was green. After some time, both groups were re-examined, and those who were given false information suddenly “remembered” that the traffic light was green, and not red, as they had previously claimed.
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 gives them to you under the guise of your own. After all, for survival, the main thing is thought, and its copyright is the tenth thing. A high-profile example is George Harrison, who had to pay $600,000 for a song that he sincerely considered his own. This can happen to anyone. For example, some time after a fierce argument and desperate defense of your position, having processed your opponent’s idea, you accept it as your own. Cryptomnesia also manifests itself in the overlap of dreams and reality, when a person cannot remember exactly when this or that event happened to him, in a dream or in reality.
A sensational discovery by scientists was the fact that the brain, it turns out, is capable of deceiving us. When force majeure circumstances occur in our lives, he has to give an “emergency response” to help get out of the situation. He looks for the shortest path, often creating the illusion of the right decision. Even when we calmly relax alone in our favorite room, the brain receives a lot of information about the reality around it. Remember Shurik's adventures in the film "Obsession"? He absolutely did not remember that he had already been in this apartment, but his brain helpfully began to “slip” into him seemingly unnecessary details: the striking of chimes, the ticking of a clock, the sound of a closing door. Such details are generally not needed, then the brain still throws them away as unnecessary, but at some point they are still able to emerge from the depths of memory. In addition, the specificity of our brain is such that it often has to make a choice between accuracy and speed. Usually he chooses the latter. When we are not talking about making an instant decision, he is capable of slowly and scrupulously processing data, as, for example, this happens when solving crosswords or mathematical puzzles.
Dr. Ramachandran, director of the University of California's Center for Brain and Cognition, is called by fellow physicians the “Marco Polo of neurology.” It was he who discovered visual illusions- they are easy to find on the World Wide Web and make sure that what we see is not at all what is actually depicted. In addition, it was he who discovered Capgras syndrome. With this syndrome, it seems to a person that, for example, his wife is not his wife at all, but an impostor who is very similar to her. The second of the doctor's discoveries is phantom syndrome. It manifests itself in the fact that a person whose limb has been amputated feels pain in it. By the way, in one of the episodes of the film about Dr. House, the latter treats phantom pain with the help of a mirror. This method is real, discovered by this same scientist.
M. BACHENIN: Olga, hello! Welcome!
O. IVASHKINA: Good evening!
M.B.: Today we will talk about perception and illusions of perception of the world around us, that is, about what we see, what we hear and, perhaps, what we feel. First of all, of course, about some single whole, which is and what can be called perception. If we talk about illusions right away. Olga, what can be called an illusion of human perception in the world around him?
O.I.: In principle, the illusion of human perception can be called such a feeling when we see something, hear something, somehow feel something that is objectively not actually there, and we can control it, write something down, take a photograph.
M.B.: That is, to have some standard for yourself.
O.I.: Yes, we can know about it, but for some reason we are mistaken and perceive something wrong.
M.B.: What about examples?
O.I.: There are a bunch of optical illusions, you can find them all on the Internet by searching “optical illusions”, when, for example, we see two identical squares of the same color due to a certain added thing different color. When we see lines of the same length due to the fact that they are located differently, in perspective they are of different lengths: one is shorter, one is longer.
M.B.: But this is all created by human hands. I am now in the Life studio, and I can, for example, see not three microphones on the side of the table where you are sitting now, but four. Is this possible?
O.I.: This is possible if something goes wrong.
M.B.: With my eyes, you mean?
O.I.: With the eyes or with the parts of the brain that process this visual information for us. It is clear that you may begin to see double temporarily for some reason.
M.B.: But this is all unhealthy. And sometimes we understand that this cannot be so. You also know this expression: “I don’t believe my eyes.” That is, we understand that it should be one way and no other way, but in reality it happens differently. Or, on the contrary, it happens just differently, or rather, it happens the way it should be, but we perceive it differently. How can this be explained from a scientific point of view?
O.I.: If you place two gray squares next to each other, they will be exactly the same, we can check that they are the same gray, but if we create the effect of lighting one and darkening the other (one can imagine), then the entire square that seems illuminated to us will look much lighter, because we know that illuminated objects are lighter and brighter.
M.B.: Lighter, yes.
O.I.: And a darkened square will look darker and grayer, because we know that dark objects, that is, objects on which a shadow falls, are much darker.
M.B.: This is what we know. And what do we see in this?
O.I.: That's how we see it. As we know, so we see, but in fact, if we remove this darkening and lightening, which is artificially applied to the picture, we will see absolutely identical gray squares.
M.B.: And at the same time we remain healthy.
O.I.: Yes. All our lives we have seen that the shadow is darker, the light is lighter, everything is fine.
M.B.: You constantly appeal to the fact that we know that we have accumulated such experience. Can we say that this experience sometimes lets us down?
O.I.: In most cases, it does not let us down, because we encounter this state of affairs much more often than these optical illusions, as in the picture. This means that all our behavior, all our recognition, perception, whatever, must be adaptive. This means that most of our life is adaptive, but here there was a mistake.
M.B.: Yes, that's understandable. Then what comes first - our knowledge and experience, which has been accumulated and tells us how it should be, or the visual signal that we receive and which is sent to the brain?
O.I.: Both. We receive something, something is compared.
M.B.: What is stronger, what volume is greater? What do neuroscientists say? I look now and see a man in front of me. In realizing this, what is more important - my experience, what do I know: this is what a person looks like, or the fact that I see him?
O.I.: Both. If this person's mouth and eyes are removed, and the mouth and eyes are generally the most important thing for our perception of faces. The perception of faces is very important for humans, because we evolutionarily needed to learn to recognize each other’s emotions, negotiate, and interact socially. But most of the emotions are achieved precisely through changes in the eyes and lips. So there are all these things that if you turn the face upside down, it will be much more difficult to recognize the emotion that is depicted there or what kind of person is there.
M.B.: That is, in this case, experience will interfere with us? The eyes will continue to work for us, but experience is already against us. Habit - I now equate habit with experience.
O.I.: Not exactly a habit, but it was so important to look here, and therefore more important function These are the areas of the brain that play.
M.B.: And if we leave the two main ones - the mouth and eyes, and remove the nose, then what remains is the perception of a person?
O.I.: If we remove the eyes and mouth, then we can understand that this is a person, it will just take more time, distinguishing one from the other will be much more difficult than if with eyes and mouth.
M.B.: The brain will slow down and take more time to process information.
O.I.: Yes. When we talk about face perception, there are two big systems. One system recognizes them very quickly - eyes, mouth, everything is in place, great, let's move on, you can continue to look at emotions, noses. And the other is when something went wrong. For example, there are famous fruit paintings where faces are created from fruits and vegetables. And we recognize faces in them, everything is fine, but people who have a lesion in a place like the fusiform gyrus, they can recognize, if you show them you or me, they recognize that it is a person. But they do not recognize a face among this pile of fruits and vegetables, because this system of additional recognition by elements is disrupted.
M.B.: Was everything normal with the artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s perception of the world around him?
O.I.: Yes.
M.B.: This is also kind of unconventional, and our life experience does not work for us here - to make a person out of fruit! You see individual fruits and flowers, other plants, and at the same time you see a person.
O.I.: We can't say for sure.
M.B.: Didn't you think he was crazy?
O.I.: I didn't count. It seems to me that, in principle, everything is fine.
M.B.: No, his paintings are beautiful! And he is unique in his own way. Okay, do we see everything that surrounds us, or only what we need? Understand the phrase “what we need” correctly. That is, here I put the brain first. See, I still separate the brain and myself, right? And you, scientists, do not separate this. Do we only see what we need?
O.I.: We first see what is most important to us. Evolutionarily, it was very important for all of us to notice movement, so as not to miss a predator or so as not to miss our prey when hunting.
M.B.: Or catch up with the female.
O.I.: Yes. And that’s why we have everything to move visual system responds much better and we can see that going forward. But, of course, we also see static objects.
M.B.: Fine. That is, you can come up with something like this: let’s say, if I need to hide, it’s better for me not to run away, but to somehow merge with something (but now I added a little imagination), stand statically if a person is in a hurry looking for me or someone Whatever it was, it’s more likely that he won’t notice me, because I’ll be static.
O.I.: It depends. If you're wearing a neon jacket...
M.B.: No, that's understandable. I mean if I merge with the wall.
O.I.: Animals (mice, for example) have two main strategies when faced with some kind of danger. One is to run away quickly, but sometimes there are situations when it is clear that now you will have time to run away and hide there.
M.B.: Is this clear to mice?
O.I.: They can evaluate it. And the second strategy is to freeze. And even if the substrate is not the most suitable, you white mouse in a black chamber, but in our experiments, if you scare them, they freeze.
M.B.: Is it their instincts?
O.I.: They have two main forms of behavior when in danger - to run and freeze. And in our experiments, they know that the chamber is closed, there is nowhere to run, they have already examined it and checked it, so they freeze, trying to avoid danger in this way. This would be natural for them in their natural environment.
M.B.: To the question of who decides what we need, we can answer that these are our instincts, based on our (if we talk about people) knowledge? And more tasks. For example, what are we looking for?
O.I.: We have pre-existing behaviors. Let's not call them instincts; they are simply evolutionarily developed forms of behavior. Some of them must further develop in childhood as the brain and person mature. The most simple shapes There are always behaviors, this can include coughing, vomiting, such basic things without which the baby will not survive.
M.B.: I still want it somehow visual perception let down. We said that there is something that you did not want to call instincts.
O.I.: Yes, and there are forms of behavior that we develop. Some of them unfold because they are evolutionarily pre-determined. They are certainly influenced by the experiences we receive. If we take some starting point, an adult, mature person, whose learning then continues throughout his life, his brain changes throughout his life. And then what happens to us is superimposed. If some event is very strong, then our behavior changes radically simply due to it alone. A borderline example is how soldiers or people who have survived some kind of terrorist attack develop post-traumatic stress disorder. stress disorder and now they are starting to get scared and react inadequately to situations, to some things that remind them of that event. Like a loud car exhaust.
M.B.: Winces, yes.
O.I.: He shudders or falls in horror and covers his head, because that event was so strong, affected us so much that it alone was enough for the networks of brain neurons that are responsible for something to change.
M.B.: Would such a conditioned reflex work for them?
O.I.: You could say. Conditioned reflex- this is a big class.
M.B.: It's clear. I'm just trying to somehow define this to bring it closer to more people's understanding, I guess. Why and how long do neurons remember this? I understand very well what you are talking about. I remember well how, probably for six months, I drove with extreme caution and with great apprehension the place where I had an accident. There was an accident without casualties, the car was slightly damaged, nevertheless, this was the first time for me, and accordingly it shocked me. I still don’t like this place, but the frantic concentration on this particular stretch of road has already gone. It turns out that I forgot my neurons?
O.I.: There was an accident, this severe shock, it is important to remember this as something bad, it is important to beware of this bad place.
M.B.: Why don't you want to call it instincts? Because neurons can't have instincts?
O.I.: No, neurons cannot have instincts, I just don’t want to introduce terminology.
M.B.: Confuse biological concepts. It's clear.
O.I.: Yes. And that's it, you remember it. Then you drove there once - nothing bad happened, twice - nothing bad happened, three. And that’s it, gradually this particular one neural network who remembers this has become less important. The reaction of increased attention is no longer very important here, you can get past it. But it was not a very strong event. Yes, it was negative, yes, it shocked you.
M.B.: But it’s not comparable to a terrorist attack, that’s true.
O.I.: Yes. It cannot be compared with military operations. It is already very difficult to knock down that reaction, and this is a task that doctors and neuroscientists are still struggling with, because they are trying to change this memory. In principle, if you recall that memory in some way and try to change its significance to a more positive one, then you can try.
M.B.: Is it possible to conclude from this, from this paragraph that was just spoken, that doctors, scientists, neuroscientists are able to modify perception and, as a result, consciousness? That is, you can work with me and I will stop loving my family and, on the contrary, I will begin to perceive them as enemies.
O.I.: Straight ahead.
M.B.: Do you know where it was? Several films. As luck would have it, it always slips out of my head, this disease is known to the entire team. In any case, the question remains. While you are talking, I will now remember this film.
O.I.: But this is such a slightly taboo topic. We could probably do this using certain chemicals, pharmacological substances. We know how to do this in animals by controlling the activity of their neurons. These are famous modern experiments where they try to change memory in animals, create false memories in mice, or change what we call the valence of a memory, that is, the significance of a memory, whether it is good or bad. And for this purpose, special transgenic animals are used, and their genome is modified so that certain new genes appear there; genes are taken from algae or bacteria. In algae and bacteria, these genes encode special light-sensitive channels; they need them in order to receive the energy of the sun and convert it into energy that can be used as some kind of food. In mice, everything is organized differently, but the most important thing is that if we illuminate these proteins, which are built into a neuron, into a brain cell, and to illuminate them, we use optical fiber (they are also used in the fiber-optic Internet), we insert it into the brain above a certain group of neurons and using a laser we send light there. This channel opens and sodium ions, for example, enter the neuron. The entry of sodium ions into a neuron means that the neuron is activated. When we say that a neuron is active, it means that this happened.
M.B.: This chemical reaction happened.
O.I.: Yes, this event happened - sodium came in, the neuron was activated. Exactly how is not important, but the main thing is that now we can control the activity of neurons by turning on or off the light.
M.B.: It turns out that you can control your brain.
O.I.: Yes.
M.B.: Agree, it sounds primitive now, turning the light on and off. But you can’t order the same mice to perform some complex actions, can you? She can either sit down or stand up. I've composed it now.
O.I.: No, why?
M.B.: Or depending on what to let the light in?
O.I.: There is a certain place where an aggressive male sits, something unpleasant for mice. And the mice remember this place. And as usual, in order to remember something... When we remember something, a group of neurons appears, a network of neurons that record and contain this memory. And we can make sure that this particular group of neurons is marked with exactly these light-sensitive proteins, only there it will be. Then the mouse runs to another place, and something pleasant sits there. For example, for male mice, what is pleasant is a female mouse. They run there happily, and everything is great, and then we turn on the light. And the light activates those neurons that are associated with a scary male or a scary current. Normally, if we offer them a place where there used to be a female, or a place where there used to be a male, then, of course, they will run to where the female was, because it’s nice there, and they want to look for her. If we change the valence and significance of the memory in this way, now the female is not associated with the female.
M.B.: And with an aggressive male.
O.I.: Yes. Then they will no longer prefer this place.
M.B.: But it turns out that this can be done thanks to these experiments only at a certain distance from the mouse, that is, you are nearby. And when I asked this question, I was thinking that some kind of work is happening with a person, and then he leaves, but thanks to some kind of phone call or an object or another person that appeared (it is clear that this is a planned action) in his field of vision , it runs some code or something. It is fantastic?
O.I.: Yes, I think it's fantastic.
M.B.: I remembered that movie - "The Hunger Games", some part. These are several films, one after another. And there the person’s consciousness changed, he began to perceive his beloved girl as an enemy. In the last part. Otherwise I couldn’t calm down. Yes, the listener asks the question: “Why is that object that we sometimes diligently look for, which is the goal of our search and we cannot find it, is in the most visible place?” Is this some kind of illusion getting in the way? Or our inattention, fatigue?
O.I.: Yes, it's not an illusion. Rather, we have some kind of knowledge that, most likely, we put this key in this basket.
M.B.: Look, this knowledge of ours is hindering us again.
O.I.: Yes, sometimes things happen that get in the way. And if instead of a basket we hung the key here on the door under the bell, where we should immediately see it, but it seems to us that we need to find it in some secluded places: a basket, a pocket, a backpack, something. And so attention is constantly switched to such things.
M.B.: We just can't find it.
O.I.: Yes.
M.B.: They also asked why the eyes are the mirror of the soul, but it seems to me that this lies on the surface. The eyes are the first thing we see on a person’s face, and they are a reflection of emotions. Agree with me, right? But I want to ask about another phrase. How would a neuroscientist explain the phrase “ease of perception.” I sit, see everything, understand everything, it’s not difficult for me. Why is this happening? After all, there is a huge number of items, plus information, plus I also multitask at times.
O.I.: Yes, but the brain is optimally built and developed in such an optimal way. Already during our development, he learned, for example, everything related to vision. A small child under one or two years of age does not have the same vision as an adult. The closer you get to birth, the more different it is. At first he sees a more blurry image, does not highlight the contours, then the contours begin to be highlighted, then they become voluminous. For all this to happen, the child needs to experience it, so, for example, they say that it is important to walk with children in open spaces, so that the perspective can be seen, so that the visual system can train to recognize it.
M.B.: Is a child able to do this while lying in a stroller, or is it still advisable to carry him in an upright position at this moment?
Vague doubts are already arising about whether the theme of our program “perception of illusions” means the perception of the surrounding world, because we are touching on so many nuances here. It’s impossible to separate and talk about perception without talking about memory, say, experience, right? It's all very interconnected.
O.I.: When we talk about the brain, about the body, it is important to talk about it as a whole, and therefore it is difficult to share perceptions without experience. No this person no perception without pre-existing experience.
M.B.: We paused on the topic of babies. And then a question arose from the listener: “Why is it undesirable to look at babies lying in a crib or stroller from the head?” That is, we appear upside down in his eyes. Is this just superstition or is it also somehow connected with the development of vision in a child, with the accumulation of perceptual experience?
O.I.: No, what is never allowed is possible, of course, because if you just approached from the side of the head once, once he saw your face upside down.
M.B.: Scared!
O.I.: But most of the time he will see your face correctly.
M.B.: What if you do this all the time?
O.I.: If he constantly does this and he does not see the face correctly, then later there will be great difficulties with what we have already talked about, in order to perceive the face and emotions.
M.B.: At what point in life can this happen? When will he become conscious?
O.I.: As far as I remember, by the age of three, the perception of faces was already completely formed. And right away it won’t be quite the same. In principle, the brain is quite plastic, and everything can be fixed. Even children who were born due to clouding of the lens, for example, were blind and did not see, then later, if at an older age (it seems that this can be done at one and a half or two years old) an operation is performed and the lens is returned to normal, then they learn see the same.
M.B.: It's as if they were born with full vision.
O.I.: But this requires much more effort. So it develops gradually, and we know that there are so-called critical periods in children, during which the maturation of certain functions should occur, during which the maturation of certain functions occurs. That is, vision, speech perception, speech production, speaking. Most of these functions can then be learned.
M.B.: Is there something that cannot be learned if it does not develop as it should develop, as usual, traditionally? That is, Mowgli can remain Mowgli.
O.I.: If they are found already in adulthood, at an older age, at 6-7 years, then yes, many functions do not return and there are great difficulties with social functions and so on. But I said that vision can be learned, but it will require some effort. There are special exercises. Children who have undergone surgery are already specially taught to see all this correctly.
M.B.: Yes. Apparently, we also influence the brains of our listeners. Listen to the text messages: "Game of Thrones" programs my neurons for bloodthirstiness." Can it really? I remember very well how I watched "The Brigade" in one evening and I began to speak their language. I mimicked so much, that is, I was immersed. It affects brain or what?
O.I.: Some kind of imitation. Obviously, if you went on air that same evening, you would force yourself to speak normally through an effort of will.
M.B.: No, we know examples from life when no effort of will is enough to not miss some obscene word.
O.I.: It's random.
M.B.: Which one is random? This happens all the time among the military.
O.I.: They don't just want to.
M.B.: I don't think they can!
O.I.: And then, this often happened to them throughout their lives, and the “Brigade” - one evening.
M.B.: It is clear that the volume was small. Look, another question. “Is it possible to increase the volume of long-term memory with the help of any drugs? (This is due to what we said about mice). Without training it, for example, by reading or constant repetition. Or is it possible to remember what you read, for example poetry, the first time?”
O.I.: Maybe yes. There are all sorts of special techniques, I don’t know them very well.
M.B.: But this is not a phenomenon, is it simply an effect on some parts of the brain that we usually do not use?
O.I.: There are phenomena. A case that is widely known, and there is more than one, but in Russia the most widely known case is the case of Shereshevsky with hypermemory, when he remembered everything that was told to him. He was a journalist, and at some point his editor began to notice that when he gave out assignments, who should go where, what to do and what to ask, he was the only one who never wrote anything down. He sat, carelessly looked out the window and wrote nothing down. And he thought that this was a manifestation of carelessness, carelessness in work, and at some point he decided to test it in the series: “Come on, tell me what I told you.” And he told everything that he had told him, and everything that he had told everyone else.
M.B.: Has it been investigated?
O.I.: Yes, Luria studied him, he conducted various tests, showing that this hypermemory interferes with him in a certain way.
M.B.: So there's too much to identify that a glass is a glass?
O.I.: No, perception and identification were not affected. But to sort out the information he really needed, it all took time. This is a phenomenon.
M.B.: Systematization.
O.I.: Yes. But there are simply techniques that allow you, by marking words by color or placing them in a room, to remember a lot, a lot.
M.B.: Doesn't this complicate things even more?
O.I.: I did not try.
M.B.: What is your own memory system? It's different for everyone. Someone subtracts two from five or forty-eight from thirty-eight, that is, someone remembers by numbers, someone, you say, by colors. What do you need to do to remember the phone number?
O.I.: I just remember numbers easily.
M.B.: I envy these people. They surround me, I'm lucky to have them! Apparently, so that I would understand how wretched I am at this.
O.I.: I do this as usual, as everyone advises, I repeat several times. But it gets in the way. I remembered the number of one bank card to pay online, then it changed, I kept confusing it with the new one, then I remembered the new one, but I didn’t forget that one.
M.B.: This is what experiments also confirm, that systematization is lame due to the large quantity, the volume that our memory allows us.
O.I.: Of course, everything gets confused, especially similar things.
M.B.: Yes, a twelve-digit number.
O.I.: There is not the best recognition of similar things.
M.B.: I want to ask you how to explain the fact that sometimes we remember something that didn’t really happen? I’m not talking about deja vu now, I’ll warn you right away. That is, it was not absolutely not, but as an example, so that everyone understood what we were talking about. An event in which two people take part, let's keep them to a minimum. Two people, both took part, both recorded it in their memory. Three years have passed, five years, it doesn’t matter. And this event is really important. And they meet and start telling each other about how they perceived this, say, date. And they both realize that it feels like they were on different dates. That is, we think of something, invent it, embellish it. And besides positive value these bright events, important events in our lives - I noticed this even when we are talking about tragedies - we attach some significance to the departed person, inventing it, and then it is somehow integrated into this story and becomes true.
O.I.: Yes, but there are two aspects to this, as it seems to me. The first aspect is more understandable - this is a kind of forgetting, a certain generalization, and now something more general remains.
M.B.: This is a dry residue.
O.I.: Yes. Some facts have been forgotten, and this is one part. The other part is that, on the contrary, it is often remembered and often this memory is reactivated. We remember this, and the network of neurons that are associated with this memory is activated.
M.B.: Does it grow throughout life? Let's say I remember my first love every day. Will this group of neurons grow in me?
O.I.: There is no telling, it can change.
M.B.: More connections?
O.I.: Communications change, incoming connections may change. Although I say so confidently, in fact we know what can happen, but definitely not yet completely.
M.B.: Okay, okay, I interrupted you.
M.B.: So that it doesn't let go.
O.I.: Just to make sure they're roughly on par with the person we're talking about. It becomes overgrown with details, and then it is clear: the details are repeated over and over again. At first this is done more or less consciously, and then that’s it, the neuron of details (roughly speaking, conditionally) was added there and integrated into this network, the person himself can no longer distinguish.
M.B.: What happened and what didn’t happen.
O.I.: Yes. And so time after time, since this is a very significant event, a person thinks a lot about it and talks a lot, and if you think each time, adding a little something...
M.B.: Or in another state, for example, sad or happy.
O.I.: Yes. Then you can add a little more there, to this memory.
M.B.: So what are the conclusions here? Firstly, you need to write everything down if it’s really important, because it turns out you can’t trust diaries if you write from memory, especially when years have passed, right?
O.I.: Obviously, it depends on the individual. There are those who will never add anything there.
M.B.: These are unemotional, probably less emotional people.
O.I.: Because they thought about it strictly as it was. But it is better to rely on some written evidence of the era.
M.B.: In principle, we are done, it turns out, about why we invent? It seems to me that this is one of the most striking illusions in a person’s life. I will now explain why I became so animated. I collect these illusions. I collect things that do not coincide with other participants in our common events. And I’ve accumulated quite a few of them over my life. a large number of. But when I share with someone, people sometimes look at me in surprise, because they either didn’t notice it, or they didn’t have it in their life. That is what interests me.
Since we were talking about something that didn’t happen, let’s have some more deja vu here. What is deja vu? Is this something that didn’t happen, but we think it did? But at the same time we realize that this did not happen. Right?
O.I.: There are many French words that I cannot pronounce, except for “vu,” but when it seems to us that we hear, when it seems to us that we smell. But in in a general sense it's mostly about some complex scenes. Usually from the series: we are in Greece for the first time, we approach some restaurant, the sun is shining, and we think: “Oh, my God, I’ve been here before.” It often happens to me when we are discussing something at work, and I keep thinking: “Oh, my God, this conversation has already happened.” In the same words, in the same composition.
M.B.: Why does it seem that way to you?
O.I.: There are two big theories of déjà vu. It is clear that since it seems to us that something has already happened, it means that we remember something wrong, or remember too much, or something else.
M.B.: Look, "too much" again. Too much information is getting in the way - stop progress, I'll get off!
O.I.: No, it doesn’t bother us now. We, on the contrary, have stopped remembering many things and are googling everything.
M.B.: So we are deteriorating?
O.I.: I don't like this word.
M.B.: Don't you like black and white? Yes this is correct.
O.I.: We are very adaptable. If you can find something, why remember it?
M.B.: How can you increase the amount of memory? I haven’t forgotten about deja vu, we’ll be back now. How about increasing memory capacity, training? What if life throws us into such circumstances that no Googles, Shmoogles or Bubbles will be available and we will need to remember everything.
O.I.: Maybe, but not yet likely. In my opinion, this is a very adaptive process.
M.B.: Okay, I agree. You are simply loyal to people. You are not loyal to mice.
O.I.: Mice can't Google, they have to remember. What I mean is that there are some important things that need to be remembered.
M.B.: Yes, I agree.
O.I.: And you can also, if you are interested in something, spend more of yourself on memorizing. I don't know if you're a wine fan about memorizing wine regions or anything like that. There’s absolutely no point in memorizing the capital of Singapore, for example, if it doesn’t bother you at all. For what?
M.B.: Now you somehow took it and tripped it up. Okay, let's get back to you. For some reason, I imagine you exclusively in the laboratory. Apparently because mice, mice.
O.I.: In the laboratory, yes.
M.B.: Super! So, I guessed right. And it seems to you that it happened. You are a rationalist, you are a scientist! There is no soul or god.
O.I.: It's just a feeling. If you scroll through all this, it becomes clear, just like with the feelings at the restaurant or somewhere else, that this did not and could not happen. And there are two theories about this. The first theory says, okay, there was something else, something else is stored in memory.
M.B.: Similar or not?
O.I.: Similar. And it just reminded you of something else.
M.B.: Like a person similar to another person.
O.I.: Everything is fine. But instead of remembering this other thing and rejoicing at what a wonderful feeling, for some reason this other thing is not remembered, that is, we cannot pick out this network of neurons, and instead of a clear memory, we get the feeling that this is connected with something... then to others, it has already happened. And this is simply based on the fact that we are not always good at distinguishing between two similar things and remembering them well.
M.B.: Yes, you talked about this. Now I’m going to say something that is sedition for scientists, but I’ll say it anyway. They have a certain esoteric coloring, right? You don’t want to admit that there’s something you haven’t yet discovered in our heads? What we now, out of ignorance or out of faith, call a certain divine essence inside every person, and you, scientists, simply cannot explain this yet, because it has not yet been discovered. Do you know what I mean? I read that they don’t attach much importance to déjà vu, that it’s something that scientists can discuss at their leisure during a conversation, but no one wants to discuss it seriously. What if there is some kind of salt and some kind of crazy discovery in this?
O.I.: First of all, I absolutely admit that there is something we haven’t discovered yet.
M.B.: I thought you were going to say that God exists. I love provoking scientists so much. Okay I will not! We delete my question from the protocol. There's something we haven't discovered.
O.I.: We cannot assume any hypothetical power of telekinesis based on existing facts, and yes, then we can be very surprised if it does exist. But it seems that still not. It's the same with the brain. We don't know a lot about the fact that neurons are activated, we know that they are activated in a certain rhythm, in certain combinations. And we know that more or less all of this is the activation or deactivation of neurons. There's nothing else there. But how, by what principle, how does it generally happen that from these not very complex activities (if you look at it, everything looks quite simple) our “I”, consciousness, that’s all, is formed - this principle is incomprehensible to us.
M.B.: That is, how from something so simple is formed, if compared with animals, for example, something so complex is formed.
O.I.: No, in animals everything is also very complicated.
M.B.: What then to compare with? Who should I substitute here, in this phrase, instead of animals, in comparison with whom?
O.I.: Not compared to anyone. We just see the neuron, we know that it works like this - sodium comes in, potassium comes out, chlorine comes in, whatever.
M.B.: All chemical processes of some kind.
O.I.: We know a lot of different chemical and physiological characteristics neurons, how they communicate with each other, how they transmit information. We are starting to learn something about populations of neurons, how they jointly generate the rhythm of the brain, what we see on the EEG, all sorts of other things, and how it is superimposed, how it ensures a certain work. But I say more all the time in vague words, because we don’t know further.
M.B.: What doesn't give you the opportunity? There is no such equipment, supercomputers? I don't know what's missing? What's stopping you from delving into your brain?
O.I.: Of course, we are most interested in how a person works.
M.B.: Yes.
O.I.: To look at how a person’s brain works, we cannot get into his brain, unfortunately or to someone’s joy.
M.B.: Yes, so that it does not lead to the death of a person.
O.I.: Yes, we can only look at the whole brain. We lack the resolution of fMRI. We can see certain areas of the brain, but it's not about the areas, it's about individual neurons. We have already more or less understood this from other experiments on animals. And permission is not enough. Sooner or later we will probably overcome this.
A very big problem for neuroscientists is analyzing everything. You can get a huge sheet of Excel data sheet and not know how to ask the right question. This is difficult even for me to explain now.
M.B.: I understand, yes. It’s difficult to explain now, because it’s not clear at first. This is all clear, I'm just looking at my watch, and I'm really looking forward to asking the question that a listener wrote to us. “Isn’t it a reason to contact a specialist because I have been remembering phone numbers with codes and names for more than 10-15 years, but periodically I forget what “Vasya said a week ago?” That is, short-term memory tends to zero.”
O.I.: No. Now I’m back to terms again. Short-term - this is up to several hours, then it’s just in its own way physiological mechanism becomes long-term.
M.B.: Fine. What's wrong with a person? Or is it like that?
O.I.: Maybe it just doesn’t matter what Vasya said. I think it's okay, it's just features.
M.B.: Of course, we don’t have time to talk about hallucinations and dreams, which means there is a reason to meet again. Neuroscientist Olga Ivashkina, thank you very much for the evening.
O.I.: Thank you. Goodbye.
M.B.: Happy, friends.
We are used to trusting our brain, but sometimes it is capable of deceiving us and even setting us up, creating false memories, confusing directions and even stopping space.
Disable GPS
Probably everyone has lost spatial orientation at least once in their life, and in a familiar place. It's like someone suddenly turned off your internal autopilot. It happens to everyone, but this brain joke may have completely unfunny reasons. In medicine, this is called “temporary loss of orientation,” when a person suddenly stops recognizing places and people and cannot make decisions on his own. The causes of this phenomenon, especially if it occurs constantly, may be pulmonary diseases or diabetes.
True, sometimes failures in your internal navigation are a consequence of constant use of GPS. If you prefer to follow the arrow on your smartphone even to the nearest store, then, according to scientists from McGill University, you will soon turn into a “navigation zombie” and completely lose the ability to navigate the landscape.
Falsify memories
It’s easy to suggest something to a person. Today, almost everyone has false memories. Usually these are stories that you heard from someone, for example, about your childhood. A person remembers practically nothing from his early years; most of what he supposedly remembers are stories from his parents and loved ones. For example, a story about how you were taken from the maternity hospital, and you screamed throughout the street. Or how once, when I was four years old, I got into a fight with a neighbor boy.
It is almost impossible to separate false memories from real ones. Research has shown that people who witness events can later “change” their memories under the influence of incorrect information. Scientists conducted an experiment in which witnesses to 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 “evidence” that the light was green. After some time, both groups were re-examined, and those who were given false information suddenly “remembered” that the traffic light was green, and not red, as they had previously claimed. Another experiment was conducted by the University of Washington. The students were asked to tell some incidents from their childhood and compare them with the memories of their parents, of which one was false. As a result, about 20% of students “remembered” the false incident during the second interview. Moreover, after each survey the story acquired new details.
Make him 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 Jim Carrey’s hero, with the help of divine power, forced Steve Carell’s hero to carry live an incoherent string of words? This is aphasia, when a person spits out meaningless gibberish. Moreover, the people to whom this happened claim that their mouth seemed to live its own life, they did not know what they would say at that 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 gives them to you under the guise of your own. After all, for survival, the main thing is thought, and its copyright is the tenth thing. A high-profile example is George Harrison, who had to pay $600,000 for a song that he sincerely considered his own. This can happen to anyone. For example, some time after a fierce argument and desperate defense of your position, having processed your opponent’s idea, you accept it as your own.
Cryptomnesia also manifests itself in the overlap of dreams and reality, when a person cannot remember exactly when this or that event happened to him, in a dream or in reality.
Make a slide show
Imagine the following situation - you are standing on the road and waiting for a green traffic light. A minute passes, two, five, the green light has long given the start, but instead of busy traffic, you still see a frozen street in front of you, as if someone pressed the “stop” button on the “world remote control”.
This "someone" is still your brain, which has undergone "akinetopsia" or "inability to perceive movement." The causes of the phenomenon can be different, from the consequences of injury to side effects taking antidepressants. A person with akinetopsia sees a stationary car as usual. If the car starts to move, it is perceived as a sequence of individual frames that leave behind a blurry trace. In other words, the road turns into a long exposure shot for you. Or another example, imagine that 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 akinotepsia, 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 wearing a mask. In general, a horror film in reality. Fortunately, akinotepsia is extremely a rare event, which disappears after the cause is eliminated.
Kill time
We know no more about the perception of time than we know 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. In childhood, a child absorbs new knowledge like a sponge, and every day is filled with impressions. As a person grows older, he acts more automatically, learns less about the world and absorbs information. Therefore, over the years we feel the passage of time speeding up. 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 is uncomfortable for him.
But there are times when a person completely loses the sense of time. More precisely, he does not perceive the sequence of events, does not divide life into years, and years into months and days. One woman refused to accept that there was a cycle of 24 hours and 365 days. She, like everyone else, got up, had breakfast, and went about her business, but for her it was an indivisible moment; to put it simply, her life always consisted of one day. This type of temporal perception is called “time agnosia.” By the way, this pathology of the brain is a “bird of a feather” with akinotepsia – a distortion of the perception of space.
Mirror others
Have you ever experienced discomfort in the body, hearing that someone has pinched a finger or broken a leg. Or, while watching action movies, they automatically grabbed the same place where the hero had just been wounded. This is the so-called sympathetic pain, a type of empathy (the ability to put oneself in the place of another person). Scientists have proven that our brain constantly copies the facial expressions, sensations, and symptoms of others. And all thanks to mirror neurons, which are present in speech, motor, visual, associative and other areas. Why people need “brain mirrors” is not yet clear. Perhaps they help with learning and early development when children learn by repeating after their parents. Or are these special neurons that are responsible for our empathy, in general, distinguish us from dinosaurs (other mammals, including primates, also have mirror neurons). In any case, it is to them that we owe what is popularly called “impressionability” - the application of what you see to yourself - pain, pregnancy syndromes and phobias.
We are used to trusting our brain, but sometimes it is capable of deceiving us and even setting us up, creating false memories, confusing directions and even stopping space.
Lose GPS Probably everyone has lost spatial orientation at least once in their life, and in a familiar place. It's like someone suddenly turned off your internal autopilot. It happens to everyone, but this brain joke may have completely unfunny reasons. In medicine, this is called “temporary loss of orientation,” when a person suddenly stops recognizing places and people and cannot make decisions on his own. The causes of this phenomenon, especially if it occurs constantly, may be pulmonary diseases or diabetes.
True, sometimes failures in your internal navigation are a consequence of constant use of GPS. If you prefer to follow the arrow on your smartphone even to the nearest store, then, according to scientists from McGill University, you will soon turn into a “navigation zombie” and completely lose the ability to navigate the landscape.
Falsify memories
It’s easy to suggest something to a person. Today, almost everyone has false memories. Usually these are stories that you heard from someone, for example, about your childhood. A person remembers practically nothing from his early years; most of what he supposedly remembers are stories from his parents and loved ones. For example, a story about how you were taken from the maternity hospital, and you screamed throughout the street. Or how once, when I was four years old, I got into a fight with a neighbor boy.
It is almost impossible to separate false memories from real ones. Research has shown that people who witness events can later “change” their memories under the influence of incorrect information. Scientists conducted an experiment in which witnesses to 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 “evidence” that the light was green. After some time, both groups were re-examined, and those who were given false information suddenly “remembered” that the traffic light was green, and not red, as they had previously claimed. Another experiment was conducted by the University of Washington. The students were asked to tell some incidents from their childhood and compare them with the memories of their parents, of which one was false. As a result, about 20% of students “remembered” the false incident during the second interview. Moreover, after each survey the story acquired new details.
Make him 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 Jim Carrey’s character, with the help of divine power, forced Steve Carell’s character to utter an incoherent string of words on live television? This is aphasia, when a person spits out meaningless gibberish. Moreover, the people to whom this happened claim that their mouth seemed to live its own life, they did not know what they would say at that 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 gives them to you under the guise of your own. After all, for survival, the main thing is thought, and its copyright is the tenth thing. High-profile examples include George Harrison, who had to pay $600,000 for a song that he sincerely considered his own. This can happen to anyone. For example, some time after a fierce argument and desperate defense of your position, having processed your opponent’s idea, you accept it as your own.
Cryptomnesia also manifests itself in the overlap 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 slide show Imagine the following situation - you are standing on the road and waiting for a green traffic light. A minute passes, two, five, the green light has long given the start, but instead of busy traffic, you still see a frozen street in front of you, as if someone pressed the “stop” button on the “world remote control”.
This "someone" is still your brain, which has undergone "akinetopsia" or "inability to perceive movement." The causes of the phenomenon can be different, from the consequences of injury to the side effects of taking antidepressants. A person with akinetopsia sees a stationary car as usual. If the car starts to move, it is perceived as a sequence of individual frames that leave behind a blurry trace. In other words, the road turns into a long exposure shot for you. Or another example, imagine that 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 akinotepsia, 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 wearing a mask. In general, a horror film in reality. Fortunately, akinotepsia is an extremely rare phenomenon that disappears after the cause is eliminated.
Kill time
We know no more about the perception of time than we know 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. In childhood, a child absorbs new knowledge like a sponge, and every day is filled with impressions. As a person grows older, he acts more automatically, learns less about the world and absorbs information. Therefore, over the years we feel the passage of time speeding up. 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 is uncomfortable for him.
But there are times when a person completely loses the sense of time. More precisely, he does not perceive the sequence of events, does not divide life into years, and years into months and days. One woman refused to accept that there was a cycle of 24 hours and 365 days. She, like everyone else, got up, had breakfast, and went about her business, but for her it was an indivisible moment; to put it simply, her life always consisted of one day. This type of temporal perception is called “time agnosia.” By the way, this pathology of the brain is a “bird of a feather” with akinotepsia - a distortion of the perception of space.
Mirror others
Have you ever experienced an unpleasant sensation in your body after hearing that someone has pinched a finger or broken a leg? Or, while watching action movies, they automatically grabbed the same place where the hero had just been wounded. This is the so-called sympathetic pain, a type of empathy (the ability to put oneself in the place of another person). Scientists have proven that our brain constantly copies the facial expressions, sensations, and symptoms of others. And all thanks to mirror neurons, which are present in speech, motor, visual, associative and other areas. Why people need “brain mirrors” is not yet clear. Perhaps they help with learning and early development, when children learn by repeating after their parents. Or are these special neurons that are responsible for our empathy, in general, distinguish us from dinosaurs (other mammals, including primates, also have mirror neurons). In any case, it is to them that we owe what is popularly called “impressionability” - the application of what you see to yourself - pain, pregnancy syndromes and phobias.
The post How the brain deceives us appeared first on Smart.
We are used to trusting our brain, but sometimes it is capable of deceiving us and even setting us up, creating false memories, confusing directions and even stopping space.
Probably everyone has lost spatial orientation at least once in their life, and in a familiar place. It's like someone suddenly turned off your internal autopilot. It happens to everyone, but this brain joke may have completely unfunny reasons. In medicine, this is called “temporary loss of orientation,” when a person suddenly stops recognizing places and people and cannot make decisions on his own.
The causes of this phenomenon, especially if it occurs constantly, may be pulmonary diseases or diabetes.
True, sometimes failures in your internal navigation are a consequence of constant use of GPS. If you prefer to follow the arrow on your smartphone even to the nearest store, then, according to scientists from McGill University, you will soon turn into a “navigation zombie” and completely lose the ability to navigate the landscape.
Falsify memories
It’s easy to suggest something to a person. Today, almost everyone has false memories. Usually these are stories that you heard from someone, for example, about your childhood. A person remembers practically nothing from his early years; most of what he supposedly remembers are stories from his parents and loved ones. For example, a story about how you were taken from the maternity hospital, and you screamed throughout the street. Or how once, when I was four years old, I got into a fight with a neighbor boy.
It is almost impossible to separate false memories from real ones. Research has shown that people who witness events can later “change” their memories under the influence of incorrect information. Scientists conducted an experiment in which witnesses to 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 “evidence” that the light was green. After some time, both groups were re-examined, and those who were given false information suddenly “remembered” that the traffic light was green, and not red, as they had previously claimed. Another experiment was conducted by the University of Washington. The students were asked to tell some incidents from their childhood and compare them with the memories of their parents, of which one was false. As a result, about 20% of students “remembered” the false incident during the second interview. Moreover, after each survey the story acquired new details.
Make him 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 Jim Carrey’s character, with the help of divine power, forced Steve Carell’s character to utter an incoherent string of words on live television? This is aphasia, when a person spits out meaningless gibberish. Moreover, the people to whom this happened claim that their mouth seemed to live its own life, they did not know what they would say at that 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 gives them to you under the guise of your own. After all, for survival, the main thing is thought, and its copyright is the tenth thing. A high-profile example is George Harrison, who had to pay $600,000 for a song that he sincerely considered his own. This can happen to anyone. For example, some time after a fierce argument and desperate defense of your position, having processed your opponent’s idea, you accept it as your own.
Cryptomnesia also manifests itself in the overlap of dreams and reality, when a person cannot remember exactly when this or that event happened to him, in a dream or in reality.
Make a slide show
Imagine the following situation - you are standing on the road and waiting for a green traffic light. A minute passes, two, five, the green light has long given the start, but instead of busy traffic, you still see a frozen street in front of you, as if someone pressed the “stop” button on the “world remote control”.
This "someone" is still your brain, which has undergone "akinetopsia" or "inability to perceive movement." The causes of the phenomenon can be different, from the consequences of injury to the side effects of taking antidepressants. A person with akinetopsia sees a stationary car as usual. If the car starts to move, it is perceived as a sequence of individual frames that leave behind a blurry trace. In other words, the road turns into a long exposure shot for you. Or another example, imagine that 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 akinotepsia, 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 wearing a mask. In general, a horror film in reality. Fortunately, akinotepsia is an extremely rare phenomenon that disappears after the cause is eliminated.
Kill time
We know no more about the perception of time than we know 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. In childhood, a child absorbs new knowledge like a sponge, and every day is filled with impressions. As a person grows older, he acts more automatically, learns less about the world and absorbs information. Therefore, over the years we feel the passage of time speeding up. 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 is uncomfortable for him.
But there are times when a person completely loses the sense of time. More precisely, he does not perceive the sequence of events, does not divide life into years, and years into months and days. One woman refused to accept that there was a cycle of 24 hours and 365 days. She, like everyone else, got up, had breakfast, and went about her business, but for her it was an indivisible moment; to put it simply, her life always consisted of one day. This type of temporal perception is called “time agnosia.” By the way, this pathology of the brain is a “bird of a feather” with akinotepsia – a distortion of the perception of space.
Mirror others
Have you ever experienced an unpleasant sensation in your body after hearing that someone has pinched a finger or broken a leg? Or, while watching action movies, they automatically grabbed the same place where the hero had just been wounded. This is the so-called sympathetic pain, a type of empathy (the ability to put oneself in the place of another person). Scientists have proven that our brain constantly copies the facial expressions, sensations, and symptoms of others. And all thanks to mirror neurons, which are present in speech, motor, visual, associative and other areas. Why people need “brain mirrors” is not yet clear. Perhaps they help with learning and early development, when children learn by repeating after their parents. Or are these special neurons that are responsible for our empathy, in general, distinguish us from dinosaurs (other mammals, including primates, also have mirror neurons). In any case, it is to them that we owe what is popularly called “impressionability” - the application of what you see to yourself - pain, pregnancy syndromes and phobias.