Miscellaneous

On my Mind—Psychological Wonders of the Brain

Our minds are our most powerful weapons and our most feared enemy. Psychology and neuroscience are both rapidly-developing fields that are finally beginning to help us understand our body’s most complex organ, but we still have a long way to go.

In the meantime, we’ll be exploring some interesting and, hopefully, insightful phenomena of our beautiful minds.

Most people have heard of déjà vu (French for “already seen”), which is the experience of being certain that you have previously been through or have even witnessed a particular situation. The sensation is typically accompanied by sentiments of strangeness and eeriness. The “past” experience is usually tied back to a dream that the person had had; however, in rare cases, said person could have a firm sense that the event had truly occurred. There are two methods that help us identify a familiar situation: retrieve the present situation from a past situation—a memory—or have knowledge about the source of a memory. Déjà vu seems to rely more so on the second method of memory retrieval, which seems reasonable. For example, if you go back to your hometown and pass by the library, you might feel as though you’ve been there—even if you’ve never gone inside.

Meanwhile, if you’ve ever met someone before but momentarily don’t recognize them at that particular moment, you are experiencing jamais vu (French for “never seen”). Sometimes, it’s described synonymously with “short-term memory loss”, even though there are significant neurological differences between the two phenomena. Jamais vu always occurs suddenly and without cause, whereas short-term memory loss is an effect of physiological causes (e.g., trauma to the head, shock). In the moment of experiencing jamais vu, our eyes continue receiving information about our surroundings but, for some reason, our brain is no longer connected to our sensory systems—you can think of the experience as the brain experiencing a computer system error.

I know that my brain experiences presque vu (French for “almost seen”)—also known as the “tip-of-the-tongue” phenomenon—very often, especially when I’m writing. Research has shown that bilingual speakers are more likely to experience this state of mind than monolinguals are. This isn’t because bilinguals have a worse vocabulary than monolinguals do. Quite the contrary, bilinguals really do know the correct word—it’s simply harder for their brains to retrieve it when they want to use the word.

Why is that?

First, monolinguals and bilinguals more or less hear the same words on a regular basis. However, monolinguals are almost guaranteed to hear a specific word in a particular language more often than bilinguals, who would most likely hear said word less often in the same language while also hearing it in their other tongue.

Second, bilingual speakers’ brains always “activate” both languages while they are speaking or writing, so in reality, the two languages “compete” with each other for superiority (the last bit was a joke). As a result, finding the right word in the appropriate language would naturally require more effort!

However, interestingly enough, “early” bilinguals—bilinguals who learned both of their languages at a relatively young age—experience presque vu less often than their monolingual counterparts.

On the subject of not being able to come up with certain words in the heat of the moment, maybe you can never find a witty comeback to your sassy friend until you’ve left their presence, head hung in shame. That’s called l’esprit de l’escalier (French for “stairway wit”). This French expression has some interesting historical roots. Supposedly, the courtiers at Versailles would leave their audience with the King or Queen and only then would they think of what they could have said to further advance their cause as they descended the long staircase in the palace.

L’esprit de l’escalier reminds me of a more modern phenomenon known as the “doorway effect”. Let’s say that you’re watching television in the living room downstairs. You suddenly think of something you had to get from your bedroom—let’s say it’s a dirty mug. You run upstairs, and once you walk through your bedroom door, you think, “Wait, what was I supposed to get again…?” Then, you stomp back downstairs to the living room in a rush of frustration, where you remember that you wanted to get your mug.

Obviously, these phenomena are only the tip of the iceberg: there are so many other eccentric yet wonderful phenomena that we experience, thanks to our lovely brains. Annoying as some of them may seem to be, they add colour to our lives and offer us a full palette of psychological experience.

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