Mind

Hacks 8-92 The idea of priming comes up more than once in this book. Given a single concept being activated in the brain, other associated concepts are quietly activated too, ready to impinge on consciousness or experience. Automatic associati...

How recently you last thought of it, and whether you've thought of anything related to it, affects how close to the surface an idea is. Things aren't just in your thoughts or out of them. It seems as if some things are nearer the surface wh...

Being exposed to a photograph for two-hundredth of a second can't really be called seeing, because you won't even be consciously aware of it. But having a photo flashed at you like this works it into your subliminal perception and means that next...

The memory system is chockablock with hacks. The information that our environment constantly provides exceeds any viable storage capacity, so memory employs a variety of methods that allow it to be choosy. One memory experience we all know is the...

But these details are often produced ad hoc and may not fully match the true source. Every memory has a sourceor at least it ought to. That said, memories can often float loose from their moorings, making it some achievement that we manage to...

We've seen how memory's way of orienting us to our surroundings has all the ingredients for a hack [Hack #83] a fast-and-loose process that is expressed through gut sensation. Here we will see that even more measured and absolute experiences, li...

Sometimes this is a good thing, but it can mean your memories don't lend themselves to being recalled in different circumstances. This situation should sound familiar to almost all of you: you're trying to remember the name of the guy who w...

This explains why you're good with faces but not with names, why you should go back to your hometown to better remember your school days, and maybe even why you dream, too. Human memory is not organized like a filing cabinet or a hard disk...

How your brain controls your muscles is something you don't notice until it goes wrong. When you drop a plate for no good reason, when disease or age rob you of the ability to will your muscles to move just like that, when you can't stop your leg...

Remembering where you are and what is currently happening are (as you might expect) both rather important. It turns out that orienting yourself in space may rely on some of the same brain areas as are used for remembering what has happened to you...

These out-of-body experiences may even have a neurological basis. We are used to experiencing the world from a first-person perspective, looking out through our eyes with our bodies at the center of our consciousness. This is sometimes known...

Hypnagogia, or the hypnagogic state, is a brief period of altered consciousness that occurs between wakefulness and sleep, typically as people "doze off" on their way to normal sleep. During this period, thoughts can become loosely associated, w...

I couldn't even begin to write this for you until I'd made myself a coffee. Some days I drink tea, but coffee is my normal stimulant of choice, and a cup of that ol' "creative lighter fluid" is just what I need to get started on my morning writ...