Weirdest Things Your Brain Does

Autonomous sensory meridian response, better known as ASMR, is something that only certain people experience. For these lucky, lucky people, certain triggers create what they describe as a sort of overwhelmingly pleasant, tingling sensation that settles into the back of their head or neck.

What causes it? No clue. A 2018 study found ASMR can produce some mental and physical health benefits, but didn't find any smoking guns. There hasn't been much research done on the phenomenon, and one of the only real scientific studies out there is from Swansea University examining the experiences of 500 people sensitive to ASMR. While they didn't even start to get into what's going on as far as brain activity in ASMR-sensitive people, they did find that for most of the people surveyed, it was whispering that really did the trick and kick-started the head tingles. Deliberate movements was another big one. So there are a whole bunch of videos on YouTube where whispering women pretend to give you a haircut, and people watch them. To relax.

We don't know a whole lot about ASMR — there wasn't even a term for it until 2010. That's not entirely surprising, after all, because even now, those who experience it have a tough time explaining it to those that don't. Even harder is explaining why you're sitting in the dark listening to women whispering at you, waiting for something a lot of people call "head orgasms." 

Ever walk into another room and completely forget why you're there? You're not alone and you're (probably) not going insane — you're just a victim of what's called the Doorway Effect.

Researchers from the University of Notre Dame set up an experiment to see just how walking from one room to another in a controlled environment actually impacted memory. The tests were done both in a virtual setting, and a real life one. Participants were asked to walk into a room and pick up an item. In the game, it disappeared into a virtual backpack while in real life, it was hidden in a box. They would then walk into a different room, put the object down, pick up another one, rinse, and repeat.

At various points in the exercise, they stopped and asked people what was in their box (or inventory). If they were asked right after going through a door, they were less likely to remember and slower to respond whether they were in a real environment or a virtual one. So what's going on? They called it the "event model," which basically means our memories work great until our brain decides the information it's holding onto isn't useful any more.

Another way to think about it is that it's bad timing, and whatever you've forgotten is the bit that your brain has decided is the least useful. If you're thinking about, say, picking up dog food, worrying about a presentation you've got at work tomorrow, wondering what you're going to make for dinner, and going to the kitchen for a cup of coffee, your brain is likely to shove that cup of joe right off your radar. When you change your physical environment at the same time, your mental one is changing gears, and sometimes those gears slip. You drop things. But don't worry, it wasn't important.

Let's try a little experiment, and you don't even have to get out of your chair! All you have to do is say (or write, or type) the word "dog" over and over again. Keep going.

Keep going.

And keep going even more. Do it enough, and it starts to sound a little funny. You'll start to wonder if it's even a word. What does this mean? Is it spelled right? What's a dog? What's happening?

It's called semantic satiation, and it happens when we see or hear the same word repeated over and over again. For around a century now, psychologists have known about the phenomenon, and it's a pretty straightforward one. When we hear (or see) something enough times, our brain gets bored, and presumably wanders off to play with someone else. We don't just stop paying attention to it — we also stop assigning it any particular meaning.

It's the same thing that's happening if you spend all day in a coffee shop — by the end of the day, you don't smell coffee any more because your brain is bored of it.

Earworms are songs that get stuck in your head. Everyone seems to have their own songs they're vulnerable to — a Goldsmiths University study asked people what they usually found getting stuck in their head, and wound up with around 5,000 songs.

Earworms happen for a surprisingly complicated reason, and part of it has to do with repetition. (How many times did you hear "Heeeeey, Macarena!" playing on the radio, and in your own head, right now?) It's more than just that, though, as songs are one of the few things that are absolutely identical every time you hear them. That gives you no question about what melody or lyric comes next, which allows your brain to run away with the song and continue to play it until you wonder if gouging your eardrums out with a spoon will help.

It also has something to do with a part of our short-term memory, called a slave system. That's the part that stores information we need to concentrate on *right now*, like a phone number, or what we're ordering when the waiter finally comes back. A song's familiarity, repetition, and catchy lyrics trick that part of our brain into thinking it's uber-important we figure out what the fox is saying right now, even though we don't really care. Also, it can take virtually any sort of exposure (or completely unrelated stimuli) to get that mental music playing ... which is why we also can't resist telling you about our pocketful of sunshine.

You've been there, trying to think of a word or a name that you know but can't come up with. It's the thing you're looking for, the whatsit you need for work, that guy in that movie. (It's Pete Postlethwaite.)

What's going on when you forget a name or word basically has to do with the way we store information. When we're trying to think of something (like that guy from Inception, wasn't he in Jurassic Park, too ... what's his name?), our memories tend to follow a series of pathways to get to the words we're looking for. Since there are a huge number of words in the English language, it makes sense that we use some more than others.

Those pathways are clear, paved, well-traveled roads. Pathways to other words are overgrown, muddy, bug-infested roads that we have to machete our way through, and that takes a little while. The words at the end are part of what's called our passive vocabulary, and since we don't use them all the time, we file them away and forget where we left them. Proper names are one of the most commonly forgotten combos, which explains why every movie and television show we watch has at least one of "those guys we've seen before" in it.

Motion sickness can, and will, ruin anything. It's more than just a nuisance, especially if it means your road trips ends with a trip to get your car detailed. That smell never goes away, and while it might not make it any better to know why it happens, at least you'll have something to talk about while you're waiting to get your car back.

We don't completely understand what's going on that makes us turn a nice sort of blue-gray color on boats and in cars, but it may have something to do with the brain being unable to process conflicting information. You're sitting still, but your eyes and ears say you're flying down the highway at 10 mph over the speed limit. It's likely that conflicting data screws up a person's sense of balance, which leads to motion sickness. There's another theory that suggests it comes from your body's inability to predict how it has to move to maintain your center of balance and keep you from doing a faceplant.

As to why some people get it and some don't, there's some evidence for a genetic base for motion sickness. There may also be a link to migraines, as people who suffer from them are more likely to get motion sickness. Fortunately, NASA is working on a way to combat the queasy feeling some are susceptible to, so hopefully before long, the teacup ride will no longer be quite so terrifying. Because that's what science is for.