This Is Your Brain on Kafka(miller-mccune.com)
miller-mccune.com
This Is Your Brain on Kafka
http://www.miller-mccune.com/news/this-is-your-brain-on-kafka-1474
7 comments
Well, presumably the first experiment was constructed to help control for that. Though I've never been terribly sure how effective these sorts of high level psychological experiments are.
I'm much more at ease when someone talks about millisecond response times and sacchades.
I'm much more at ease when someone talks about millisecond response times and sacchades.
Now we need only wait until some enterprising person releases 'Baby Kafka' for expectant mothers.
My wife is a big The Mighty Boosh fan and reads a lot of Lewis Carroll, and the other night, doing a crossword, asked: "Is there a word spelled.. i-n-t-o? In-toe?"
Simply put, absurdity exercises your brain when you seek meaning in such. Such exercise increases your ability to find meaning and patterns.
Given that our brains are hard-wired to find patterns, I'll bet this also makes us more likely to "find" them where none exist.
See: http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/11/its_one_of_the_more.p...
See: http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/11/its_one_of_the_more.p...
Can anyone suggest some good absurdist literature then?
That aside, I feel like any act which exposes your mind to ideas and experiences which are wholly new would have the same effect, eg I would be genuinely surprised if there wasn't a similar effect after someone read the Sandman comics that Neil Gaiman authored for the first time.