What's up with your Brain?

Many people have experienced times when their brains do strange things. For the most part it’s completely normal and harmless. I found this article 6 Times Your Brain Acts Nutty (Deja Vu, Anyone?) And When To Worry by Linda Melone, CSCS, an interesting read. I have experienced four of these common brain quirks.

Wordnesia : I had no idea there was a name for this but I have definitely had this happen. It’s when you look at a word you’ve written hundreds of times and it suddenly looks wrong. It can happen with the simplest of words.

Earworms: I would have to say this is extremely common. I think most people have had a song stuck in their head and it’s usually always an annoying one. I remember playing a game where you purposely tried to get a song stuck in someone’s head by singing it. It was risky though because sometimes it backfired and the only person who wound up with the earworm was the singer.

Déjà vu: Have you ever had the experience of feeling like you’ve seen or heard something before? Krista in Promised Soul expereinced that strange sensation and so have I. I remember being in class, listening to the teacher when suddenly I felt like I’d seen it all before. It usually made me feel a little sick until the moment passed. Luckily it didn’t last too long.

Synesthesia: This is one that most people have never heard of, in fact I had never heard of the term either until several years ago. I came across it quite accidentally and realized that I have synesthesia. I always thought it was “normal” until one day I asked my teenage kids if when they thought about the letters of the alphabet if they saw them in colour. They looked at me like I was strange. I realized then that it wasn’t “normal”. Yes, I see letters in colour. For example letters A, M, N, V and W are all green. Words that begin with these letters are also green. Sometimes if I forget a person’s name I usually remember the “colour” of the name. So for example if your name is Mary then your name is green. If I have forgotten your name and remember the colour I can narrow it down to what letter it starts with. However, I might end up calling that person by the wrong name like Wendy or Andrea instead of Mary. After reading the article above, I found out I was in good company.

Check out this short little article and find out why and what causes these brain quirks that many of us have experienced.