Recent Feeds + Reads

Our mind plays tricks on us all the time. Unfortunately, advertisers, co-workers, friends, and family around us exploit those common tricks daily. Our minds are so mischievous that we can’t really be sure that anything is the way we see it. What I have learned from my research is that our mind acts in ways that would have helped us with survival at one point. And perhaps these mind tricks still help at times, but often they are now a liability.

Here are common tricks that our brains play on us, and how we can avoid their dangers and exploit their benefits:

1. Thinking about the future. Fearing the future.

[…] Fear is a powerful motivator and a great tool if we are in danger, but it can plague us in modern times, when dangers aren’t so obvious and the solution to them isn’t as simple as fight or flee. In Seneca’s words,  we suffer more often in imagination than in reality. If you need to approach a difficult situation, use fear as a fuel for motivation. Channel it, rather than letting it paralyze you.

2. Thinking about thinking about thinking…

[…] The discipline of metacognition can be called ‘thinking about thinking’, or ‘knowing about knowing’. Simply put, it allows us to realize that our thoughts aren’t set in stone and can be altered by other thoughts.

[…] The fact that we can change our thoughts by thinking about them is the basis for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and one of the arguments for a more spiritual aspect to humanity, or some form of larger consciousness. Thinking about your thoughts can change your thought patterns and your behavior.

3. Old habits die hard.

[…] Habit formation is in no way unique to humans, as Pavlov’s dogs would argue, but our ability to cultivate good habits is something we can learn, once we’ve gone through the (above) process of thinking about how we act and think. […]

4. Winter is coming. Time to hibernate.

When winter starts to approach, our bodies are programmed to conserve energy by eating more or exercising less. This is a natural response when you are in a low-food or temperature environment, but one that is no longer necessary if you are have adequate food and heat. […] This is one of those tricks of the mind that can’t really be used usefully, only overcome.

5. My reality is not your reality.

[…] Our minds are able to restructure our memories of an event to make us appear like the good guy, even if we weren’t. And the opposite – anybody trying to introduce themselves to somebody attractive has probably experienced ‘approach anxiety’, where any small comment or gesture becomes a hurtful insult. The positive aspect here is that we can retrain ourselves to see the good in situations instead. The wildly optimistic person may be a bit unrealistic, but it’s hard not to envy him.

For the newest James Bond movie, Skyfall, English singer Adele recorded a song with the same name. Though Adele speaks with a strong London accent, her singing voice sounds more American than British. Why do British vocalists often sound American when they sing?

Because that’s the way everyone expects pop and rock musicians to sound. British pop singers have been imitating American pronunciations since Cliff Richard, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones began recording in the 1960s. * These musicians were largely influenced by the African-American Vernacular English of black American blues and rock and roll singers like Chuck Berry, but their faux-American dialects usually comprised aspects of several American dialects. Imitating an American accent involved both the adoption of American vowel sounds and rhoticity: the pronunciation of _R_s wherever they appear in a word.

Even when singers aren’t trying to imitate a particular vocal style associated with a genre, regional dialects tend to get lost in song: Intonation is superseded by melody, vowel length by the duration of each note, and vocal cadences by a song’s rhythm. This makes vowel sounds and rhoticity all the more important in conveying accent in song.

Somewhat related: It’s Gibberish, But Italian Pop Song Still Means Something

In November 1972, Italian pop star Adriano Celentano released a song that hit No. 1 in his home country, despite the fact it wasn’t performed in Italian.

It also wasn’t performed in English.

In fact, it wasn’t performed in any language at all.

The song, called “Prisencolinensinainciusol,” was written to mimic the way English sounds to non-English speakers.

Celentano, now 74 years old, says that he wanted to break down language barriers and inspire people to communicate more.

“So at a certain point, because I like American slang — which, for a singer, is much easier to sing than Italian — I thought that I would write a song which would only have as its theme the inability to communicate,” he says. “And to do this, I had to write a song where the lyrics didn’t mean anything.”

The song has been characterized as everything from Euro-pop, funk, house and even the world’s first rap song — none of which were Celentano’s intention.

Interesting overview of the effect of our choice of words.

Word choice can predict whether you’re depressed, suicidal or lying. Swearing makes you more persuasive [but doesn’t affect credibility].

[S]mall words are more effective than big ones and why trying to sound smart actually makes you seem stupid.

Speaking positively and using words related to “insight” is associated with outstanding achievement.

That word “I” can be very telling. Powerful people don’t say it much. Less powerful people say it the most. People use “I” rarely when lying in order to psychologically distance themselves.

By the same token, “we” can be extremely powerful. Just saying it can make people feel more positive toward you and create a feeling of familiarity.

Couples who say “we” often when describing their relationships are more satisfied. Use of the word “you” is a bad sign. Using “we” can even predict whether you’ll survive a heart attack.

Mimicking another person’s word choice improves negotiations.

The question of what it means to listen is very much based upon the question of what it means to “be open.” To listen is to open oneself. Openness is a state of being, and thus, is not part of any multitasking situation. It is the sole concentration of an individual at a certain time. There is no superficial support or activity inherent in “being open,” and so, this may suggest spiritualism, but let us simply say that it is meditative. For those who meditate, the process is a discipline meant to empty the mind through mental control while allowing the self to be hyper sensitive to whatever the individual is meditating on (this is my personal understanding of it, but this may vary) whether it be God, Love, art, surroundings, etc. There is, inevitably, a sense of the esoteric in this idea as one may question how meditation on a specific thing can be possible with the intention of emptying the mind. However, this is very easily understood with the reintroduction of openness. There is no intellectual pushing, only a very wide and encompassing direction that the individual opens themselves to through emotion. In the case of the listener, music is that direction. It is, in a sense, a merging with the music, and thus, a merging with the expression of the composer and performer. Such a connection is, in my opinion, the real gift that we enjoy through the artistic process.

Because the brain habituates to repeated sounds it rewards discovering something new. This is why a good composer outfits repeated lyrics, harmonies or melodies with variations and surprises. To paraphrase Daniel Levitin, we take pleasure in matching mental beats with a real-in-the-world beats but, at the same time, the brain takes delight when a skillful musician violates an expectation in an arousing way. One hallmark of good music, therefore, is a balance between familiarity and novelty; it builds and fulfills expectations while incorporating surprises. The details of Huron’s theory are summarized by his ITPRA model, which states the pleasure any music elicits is grounded in five distinct emotional responses: Imagination, Tension, Prediction, Reaction, and Appraisal. The pleasure of music – the surprise, the tension, the comfort, the “chills,” the resolution – is simply the musician “[tapping] into these primordial functions to produce a wealth of compelling emotional experiences.”

The takeaway from Huron’s research is that the psychological processes music engages are grounded in evolved cognitive mechanisms. It follows that despite the fact that listeners enjoy a wide variety of genres and musicians, all music engages the same general cognitive processes. Thus, there are certain arrangements of sounds no brain will enjoy and every brain will enjoy.

Can someone’s music taste be “wrong?” In his last piece of philosophical writing, “Of the Standards of Taste,” David Hume clarifies that a sentiment is how people feel when they perceive art and it is neither right nor wrong because “it has a reference to nothing beyond itself.” To that end, subjective preferences in music are real and they cannot be “right,” “wrong,” “good” or “bad”. But someone can be wrong about what sounds the brain finds intrinsically pleasurable. […] Proclaiming that “I like song x” is uncontroverted. But saying “song x is good” is shifting from a subjective preference to a claim about how the brain processes music and what elements of music it finds inherently pleasing. It’s possible to be wrong about in this regard, and research from Huron, Levitin and others provides the evidence.

While previous research has shown an association between late-life cognitive activity and better mental acuity, the new study from Konstantinos Arfanakis, Ph.D., and colleagues from Rush University Medical Center and Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago studied what effect late-life cognitive activity might have on the brain’s white matter, which is composed of nerve fibers, or axons, that transmit information throughout the brain.

“Reading the newspaper, writing letters, visiting a library, attending a play or playing games, such as chess or checkers, are all simple activities that can contribute to a healthier brain,” Dr. Arfanakis said.

“In these participants, we’ve shown an association between late-life cognitive activity and structural integrity, but we haven’t shown that one causes the other,” Dr. Arfanakis said. “We want to follow the same patients over time to demonstrate a causal link.”

Dunbar argues that music evolved, at least in part, as a way of strengthening societal bonds. As a 2010 study of preschoolers found, people who sing or move in rhythmic unison tend to work together more cooperatively afterwards. This explains the presence of music in church services and military ceremonies.

Dunbar and his colleagues argue that their results “at least provide prima facie evidence that music generates the kind of endorphin ‘highs’” that can trigger cooperation—the sort of behavior that was essential for human society to evolve.

Other explanations for the origins of music have been offered, including the notion that it grew out of either courtship rituals or the need to sooth infants.  These ideas aren’t mutually exclusive, of course.  When and why so many of us evolved into passive listeners is another question.

It would be interesting to experiment on people listening to music not through headphones, or as background sounds in a store, but rather in a concert hall, sitting in rapt concentration with hundreds of other like-minded fans. Could that sort of physically passive but focused attention on music produce the same physiological effect that the players experience? Further research awaits.