Are you Mind Blind?

How well do you visualize things you remember or imagine? Try to imagine this: You have climbed to the top of a hill. You scramble to the top of some rocks. Ahead of you, past some more hills with trees on them, is a mountain range rising above the hills. The sky is mostly blue with a few fluffy clouds, and a plane going by leaving a contrail.

How well did you visualize that? Could you see it in your mind’s eye? Or was it just a description without an image?

If you couldn’t visualize it, then you may have aphantasia, a condition that 2-5 percent of people may have. This can affect how well we can recall things, to how we can imagine the future, and even dream.

See links for more information:

  1. Being ‘mind-blind’ may make remembering, dreaming and imagining harder, study finds
  2. A cognitive profile of multi-sensory imagery, memory and dreaming in aphantasia

Research shows that old people may end up believing their own lies

A new study shows that older people are more susceptible to believing their own lies as the truth within an hour of telling the lie. They had both young and old participants lie about doing an activity while their brainwaves were measured by an EEG. The older cohort was significantly more likely to believe the lie as truth.

The bottom line is that lying alters memory.

Injured brain’s memories return with music

Researchers have tried playing music to people who have had brain injuries. These people were able to recall new things about their past after listening to the music. These weren’t Alzheimer’s patients. The researchers used top 100 music from each year of the lifetimes of the people. This music seemed to elicit memories of people, or places. They also played music for a control group, and got similar amounts of recollection. More research needs to be done, but it looks like a promising method of restoring the memories of people with brain injuries.