Of Memory and Phobias
The other day I attended a talk by a Professor in Neuroscience. It was part of a distinguished lecture series, and the topic he chose was Memory. It was an excellently lucid talk and he mentioned some very interesting points.
For example, most people are scared of spider, darkness, snake, fire or height, but not of car, telephone or such things. Accroding to him, we got our phobias from our forefathers, which are carried across generations since thousands of years ago.
He also mentioned that kids have no memories of theitr life before when they were about 3 years old; the reason is that they do not learnt to form and connect words with their thoughts until that time and, so they cannot retain memories of incidents that happened before that time.
Another point he mentioned was fascinating. For example, if we are shown a slide that contains words such as sugar, honey and dessert, and later asked if the word "sweet" was there or not, we will all reply in assertive. That is because we associate sweetness with words such as sugar, honey and dessert. He gave an actual demonstration of it.
He also mentioned induced memory, that i,s how by repeatedly telling someone what happened ( which is actually totally fabricated) during, say, one's childness, a person could be made to believe that such things really happend with him. He, for example, showed photographs of how actor Alan Alda reacted very repulsively towards boiled eggs, after he was told that he had allergic reactions to boiled eggs all throughout his childhood. They carried out this experiment at the University of California, Irvine (UCI).
But the most interesting fact was that babies start learning inside their mother's womb. Some pregnant mothers who used to read particular kids' stories ("Cat in the Hat") when they were pregnant, later found that when they read the same story to their babies, they were contended.
It seems that the story of Abhimanyu from Mahabharata was not a total fantasy after all! But then, who knows!
For example, most people are scared of spider, darkness, snake, fire or height, but not of car, telephone or such things. Accroding to him, we got our phobias from our forefathers, which are carried across generations since thousands of years ago.
He also mentioned that kids have no memories of theitr life before when they were about 3 years old; the reason is that they do not learnt to form and connect words with their thoughts until that time and, so they cannot retain memories of incidents that happened before that time.
Another point he mentioned was fascinating. For example, if we are shown a slide that contains words such as sugar, honey and dessert, and later asked if the word "sweet" was there or not, we will all reply in assertive. That is because we associate sweetness with words such as sugar, honey and dessert. He gave an actual demonstration of it.
He also mentioned induced memory, that i,s how by repeatedly telling someone what happened ( which is actually totally fabricated) during, say, one's childness, a person could be made to believe that such things really happend with him. He, for example, showed photographs of how actor Alan Alda reacted very repulsively towards boiled eggs, after he was told that he had allergic reactions to boiled eggs all throughout his childhood. They carried out this experiment at the University of California, Irvine (UCI).
But the most interesting fact was that babies start learning inside their mother's womb. Some pregnant mothers who used to read particular kids' stories ("Cat in the Hat") when they were pregnant, later found that when they read the same story to their babies, they were contended.
It seems that the story of Abhimanyu from Mahabharata was not a total fantasy after all! But then, who knows!
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