Psychology – Australian Science

The Science of Dreams and Why We Have Nightmares

Editorial Board — Fri, 30 May 2014 00:15:09 +0000

The psychology of our built-in nocturnal therapy.

“The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind,

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From fables to Facebook: Why do we tell stories?

Lauren — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:33:20 +0000

Cave painting, Lascaux, France, 15,000-10,000 BC

Throughout human history, stories have existed across all cultures in all forms, from ballads, poems, songs to oral history, plays, novels. Some narratives have evolved along with the human species—we are consistently drawn back to ancient parables, fables and fairytales, constantly reworking them into modern contexts.

Narrative is a gift unique to the human species, but how as it survived for so long? Is it a by-product of evolution or essential to survival? What drove us to painstakingly inscribe portraits on rocky walls in ochre and charcoal, to compose and listen to lengthy ballads of heroes’ tales, to nosily read people’s Facebook statuses about their day, to devour novels and films like we’re hungry for fictional worlds? Neuroscience and developmental psychology have begun to answer these questions, embarking on the ambitious task of explaining why we tell stories.

Storytelling is one of our most fundamental communication methods, for an obvious reason: narrative helps us cognise information. Telling intelligible, coherent stories to both ourselves and others helps our brains to organise data about our lives and our world. But when we ask why stories are so effective at helping us cognise information, the answers are surprising: it seems that somewhere in the otherwise ruthless process of natural selection, evolution has wired our brains to prefer storytelling over other forms of communication.

Good stories engage us. When we hear plain, bloodless facts, the language processing centres of our brain light up and we decode words into meaning—but when we’re told a story, not only are language processing centres lit up, but also a vast array of other regions distinct from those centres. For example, if you tell a friend a story about a dinner party at which you ate delicious roast pork, their sensory cortex will light up; or if you tell them about the game of football, their motor cortex will become active. The parts of the brain they would use if actually experiencing the event light up, even though they are only being told about it.

This is particularly interesting when considering the effect that literary techniques have on our brain activity. In a 2006 study published in NeuroImages, Spanish researchers asked participants to read both neutral words (such as chair and key) as well as words with strong odour associations (such as coffee, perfume, lavender and soap). Brain scans using an fMRI machine showed that when they read the odour-associated words, their primary olfactory cortex lit up; but when they read the neutral words, that region remained dark. In another study at Emory University, texture metaphors such as “the singer had a velvet voice

Cite this article:
Fuge L (2013-06-18 00:33:20). From fables to Facebook: Why do we tell stories?. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 08, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/psychology/from-fables-to-facebook-why-do-we-tell-stories/

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The Science of Productivity: All You Need to Know About Productivity, Animated

Editorial Board — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 00:07:06 +0000

After their illustrated primer on how our brain works, the scientific power of thought, and the science of procrastination (and how to manage it), folks behind the AsapSCIENCE look at the science of productivity. This video is made in collaboration with Sparring Mind, the behavioral psychology blog.

The moral of the story: It’s hard to be productive while trying to maintain high energy levels through your entire day.

It’s much easier for your brain to approach a 90-minute session of productivity when it knows that a 15-minute break is coming up afterward.

You may try pomodoro technique for boosting your productivity, as well as the free pomodoro app.

Reference: http://www.sparringmind.com/productivity-science/

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Tricks of the mind

amy.r — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 03:36:35 +0000

Have you ever experienced a sudden feeling of familiarity while in a completely new place? Or the feeling you’ve had the exact same conversation with someone before?

This feeling of familiarity is, of course, known as déjà vu (a French term meaning “already seen

Cite this article:
Reichelt A (2013-01-14 03:36:35). Tricks of the mind. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 08, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/psychology/tricks-of-the-mind/

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Amy Cuddy at TED: Your body language shapes who you are

Editorial Board — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 07:37:33 +0000

Body language affects how others see us, but it may also change how we see ourselves. Social psychologist Amy Cuddy shows how “power posing

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