Good or bad, Davies examines how thinking works, always in a complicated way, since, as he notes, “there’s a saying in neuroscience: if the brain can do things five different ways, it does all ten.” His discussion covers such matters as hallucinations, which defy description, and imaginary friends: Some readers may take comfort in knowing that there’s no requirement that one abandon them at an early age. Memory recall is a work of imagination “because memories are reconstructed every time they are retrieved”-and therein lies the possibility of negative consequences, since reconstructed memories can be unhappy ones. As the author reveals, imagination is strongly linked as well to the related word “imagery,” which opens onto a universe of symbols with its own grammar, declarative and otherwise. Either way, it shouldn’t keep us from trying: Imagination is, after all, a component of creativity and of problem-solving.
Riveted: The Science of Why Jokes Make Us Laugh, Movies Make Us Cry, and Religion Makes Us Feel One With the Universe, 2014), but given that imagination seems to be strongly tied to memory, it may be that we can’t really know what we haven’t experienced-or perhaps we can. Per John Lennon, can we really imagine that there’s no heaven? Perhaps, writes Davies (Cognitive Science/Carleton Univ. When the results came back, the participants' answers before the exercise had no correlation with who they actually found attractive in person! We are beginning to understand just how much the brain makes our decisions for us: we are rewarded with a rush of pleasure when we detect patterns, as the brain thinks we've discovered something significant the mind urges us to linger on the news channel or rubberneck an accident in case it might pick up important survival information it even pushes us to pick up People magazine in order to find out about changes in the social structure.ĭrawing on work from philosophy, anthropology, religious studies, psychology, economics, computer science, and biology, Davies offers a comprehensive explanation to show that in spite of the differences between the many things that we find compelling, they have similar effects on our minds and brains.When asked to imagine a brown cow, what takes place inside your head? This pleasantly winding survey offers some clues.
In one study of speed dating, people were asked what kinds of partners they found attractive. What we like and don't like is almost always determined by subconscious forces, and when we try to consciously predict our own preferences we're often wrong. Professor Jim Davies's fascinating and highly accessible book, Riveted, reveals the evolutionary underpinnings of why we find things compelling.
0 kommentar(er)
