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We know that people make up false memories if prompted. But since our brain never stops being a jerk, we can also convert real memories into things we believe we imagined…
Cryptomnesia – the misattribution of memories – is a fairly easy trap to fall into. According to the The British Journal of Psychiatry, we experience partial cryptomnesia all the time. We remember things, but don’t remember where we learned them. So we may recommend a book to the person who recommended it to us, or tell a new piece of gossip to the person who first told us about it. We remember learning something, but not where we learned it. -Esther Inglis-Arkell
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story that relies on cryptomnesia as a plot point.
Journaling Prompt: Write about a time when you misremembered something.
Art Prompt: Cryptomnesia
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Inform your audience about the phenomenon of cryptomnesia and give a humorous example of a time when you experienced it.
Photo Credit: knitsteel on Flickr
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If you’ve found yourself wandering zombie-like through a mall or a grocery store, looking around and hoping that something will catch your eye, many would say that you’ve been the victim of a Gruen Transfer. The “transfer” is the moment when you stop shopping for something in particular, and start just shopping in general. -Esther Inglis-Arkell
Fiction Writing Prompt: Take your character on a shopping trip.
Journaling Prompt: Have you ever been the victim of the Gruen Transfer, or do you go window shopping on purpose?
Art Prompt: Gruen Transfer
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Inform your audience about the Gruen Transfer and give them some strategies to avoid it.
Photo Credit: rowens27 on Flickr
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Imagine traveling to Ireland and suddenly having to drive on the left side of the road. The brain, trained for right-side driving, becomes overburdened trying to suppress the old rules while simultaneously focusing on the new rules, said Hans Schroder, primary researcher on the study.
“There’s so much conflict in your brain,” said Schroder, “that when you make a mistake like forgetting to turn on your blinker you don’t even realize it and make the same mistake again. What you learned initially is hard to overcome when rules change.” -Science Daily
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a scene where your character is having difficulty adjusting to new rules.
Journaling Prompt: Write about a time when you had difficulty adjusting to new rules.
Art Prompt: Driving on the wrong side of the road
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Inform you audience of techniques they can use when adjusting to new rules.
Photo Credit: {Amy_Jane} on Flickr
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…cognitive scientists have discovered that the human brain has roughly two different ways of forming judgments: intuition and reflection. (They’re also called “System 1” and “System 2.”) Our intuition uses shortcuts and emotional cues, while reflection is what allows us to plan ahead and to reason abstractly about things like math, logic, and hypotheticals.
And it’s a common misconception that being unbiased means only using reflection. But in fact, your intuition is invaluable! Without its shortcuts, we’d go crazy trying to reflect carefully on every single little decision. And without its emotional cues, we’d be rudderless – we wouldn’t know what we cared about.
So it’s more accurate to think of “biases” as cases of imperfectly coordinating your intuition and reflection. – Julia Galef
Fiction Writing Prompt: Add to your character sketch. How open to intuition is your character? How does it affect his or her decisions?
Journaling Prompt: Write about a time when you followed or failed to follow your intuition. What happened? What did you learn?
Art Prompt: Intuition
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about the use of intuition vs. planning in business or in relationships.
Photo Credit: PraveenbenK on Flickr
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Is it possible to influence people as they sleep and give them their perfect dream? April 10 [saw] the launch of a new study that uses a specially designed iPhone app in an attempt to improve the dreams of millions of people around the world. If successful, the study will allow people to create their perfect dream and so wake up feeling especially happy and refreshed…As part of the launch, Wiseman has carried out a national survey into dreaming. The results demonstrate the need for sweeter dreams, with 21% of respondents reporting that they have trouble sleeping and 15% suffering from unpleasant dreams (see the ‘UK dream map’). “Getting a good night’s sleep and having pleasant dreams boosts people’s productivity, and is essential for their psychological and physical well-being. Despite this, we know very little about how to influence dreams — this experiment aims to change that” commented Wiseman. -Science Daily
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story about software or magic that can control your dreams.
Journaling Prompt: If you could decide what to dream about, what would be your perfect dream.
Art Prompt: Sweet Dreams
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about dreaming or lucid dreaming and what you’ve learned from your dreams.
Photo Credit: h.koppdelaney on Flickr
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“Your body prepares for REM sleep by sending out hormones to effectively paralyze itself so that your arms and legs don’t act out the storyline you are creating in your head. This attempt at self-protection doesn’t always work perfectly, and when that happens, what follows is far from pleasant. Sometimes, it is the brain that doesn’t get the message. This can lead to waking up in the middle of the night with the frightening sensation that you can’t move your limbs. In the Middle Ages, this was thought to be a sign that a demon called an incubus was perched on the chest. Instead, this condition is simply a flaw in the sleep cycle, a wrong-footed step in the choreography of the brain’s functions that allows a person to become conscious when the body thinks the brain is still dreaming.
“At other times, the body doesn’t fully paralyze itself like it is supposed to. This is the root of a series of problems called parasomnias, of which sleepwalking … is by far the most mild. Patients with REM sleep disorder, for instance, sometimes jump out of a window or tackle their nightstand while they are acting out a dream. Some patients I spoke with who have this disorder have resorted to literally tying themselves to the bedpost each night out of the fear that they will accidentally commit suicide.” -David K. Randall, Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story, scene, or poem inspired by this information about dreaming.
Journaling Prompt: Write about a dream you once had. If you’ve ever experienced a parasomnia, write about that as well.
Art Prompt: Sleep disturbance
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about sleep disturbances and how they affect you or someone you know.
Photo Credit: sammydavisdog on Flickr
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“Most public policy is based on offering people incentives and disincentives,” Berns says. “Our findings indicate that it’s unreasonable to think that a policy based on costs-and-benefits analysis will influence people’s behavior when it comes to their sacred personal values, because they are processed in an entirely different brain system than incentives.”
Research participants who reported more active affiliations with organizations, such as churches, sports teams, musical groups and environmental clubs, had stronger brain activity in the same brain regions that correlated to sacred values. “Organized groups may instill values more strongly through the use of rules and social norms,” Berns says…
“As culture changes, it affects our brains, and as our brains change, that affects our culture. You can’t separate the two,” Berns says…
Future conflicts over politics and religion will likely play out biologically, Berns says. Some cultures will choose to change their biology, and in the process, change their culture, he notes. He cites the battles over women’s reproductive rights and gay marriage as ongoing examples. -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: Write a story, scene, or poem based on a cultural shift that challenges people’s sacred values.
Journaling Prompt: Write about your personal values and how you feel if they are challenged.
Art Prompt: Brain and Societal Change
Photo Credit: mariopiperni on Flickr
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In the new study of desire regulation, 205 adults wore devices that recorded a total of 7,827 reports about their daily desires. Desires for sleep and sex were the strongest, while desires for media and work proved the hardest to resist. Even though tobacco and alcohol are thought of as addictive, desires associated with them were the weakest, according to the study. Surprisingly to the researchers, sleep and leisure were the most problematic desires, suggesting “pervasive tension between natural inclinations to rest and relax and the multitude of work and other obligations,” says Hofmann, the lead author of the study forthcoming in Psychological Science.
Moreover, the study supported past research that the more frequently and recently people have resisted a desire, the less successful they will be at resisting any subsequent desire. Therefore as a day wears on, willpower becomes lower and self-control efforts are more likely to fail, says Hofmann, who co-authored the paper with Roy Baumeister of Florida State University and Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota.
Scientists who study the complex interplay between desires and self control say that passing up on temptation is made ever more difficult by the idea that there is no single or clear feeling that alerts us to when our willpower is low. “But we find that when willpower is low, everything is felt more intensely,” says Baumeister, author of Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. “Low willpower seems to turn up the volume on life.” -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: Write your character’s internal monologue about resisting temptation.
Journaling Prompt: What strategies work for you in resisting temptation?
Art Prompt: Willpower
Photo Credit: Unfurled on Flickr
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At no other time in a woman’s life does she experience such massive hormonal fluctuations as during pregnancy. Research suggests that the reproductive hormones may ready a woman’s brain for the demands of motherhood — helping her becomes less rattled by stress and more attuned to her baby’s needs. Although the hypothesis remains untested, Glynn surmises this might be why moms wake up when the baby stirs while dads snore on. Other studies confirm the truth in a common complaint of pregnant women: “Mommy Brain,” or impaired memory before and after birth. “There may be a cost” of these reproduction-related cognitive and emotional changes, says Glynn, “but the benefit is a more sensitive, effective mother.” -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: Write a story, scene or poem about a character going through hormonal changes to the brain in pregnancy.
Journaling Prompt: Write about your personal experience with Mommy Brain. If you’ve never been pregnant, write about someone you know and their experience with Mommy Brain.
Art Prompt: Mommy Brain
Photo Credit: mahalie on Flickr
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The old commercial asked, “Is it real, or is it Memorex?” Perhaps a better question would be “Is that a lie, or did you just forget?”
“The fallibility of memory is well established in the scientific literature, but mistaken intuitions about memory persist,” Chabris said. “The extent of these misbeliefs helps explain why so many people assume that politicians who may simply be remembering things wrong must be deliberately lying.”
The new findings also have important implications for proceedings in legal cases, the researchers said.
“Our memories can change even if we don’t realize they have changed,” Simons said. “That means that if a defendant can’t remember something, a jury might assume the person is lying. And misremembering one detail can impugn their credibility for other testimony, when it might just reflect the normal fallibility of memory.” -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: Write a poem or scene where someone has to deal with being accused of lying when they really just forgot.
Journaling Prompt: How do you react when you think someone is lying to you?
Art Prompt: I Forgot
Photo Credit: batabidd on Flickr
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