Weird Things Humans Do Every Day, and Why
Ever noticed that when you stare at your fingers for long enough they start transforming into alien appendages before your very eyes? You see the mundane for what it really is: freaky-looking.
The same goes for the rest of our traits. We take for granted that funny things make us yell out spastically also known as laughing and that we spend one-third of every day in a deathlike state of suspended animation known as sleep. But with a little contemplation, these behaviors seem truly bizarre.
Forgetting tidbits of information isn't weird at all, but forgetting facts that you really ought to know — like why you just walked into a room or the name of your own child — is definitely a little odd. Yet, these so-called brain farts occur rather frequently for us humans.
Lots of things can cause your memory to lag, according to researchers. Some of the most common culprits are stress and sleep deprivation. But you don't have to be going through a rough patch to forget important stuff; something as simple as opening a door can trigger a brain fart, according to a study published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2011.
And lots of other random things can also cause your brain to experience tiny blips in memory recall, including spinning tires and shadows.
Everybody gets bored sometimes. But, if you really think about it, feelings of boredom are pretty strange. After all, there's a whole wide world full of stuff to do. How could humans ever lack for something to keep us occupied?
It turns out that boredom isn't really about keeping busy. Boredom stems from an objective lack of neurological excitement, which brings about a subjective psychological state of dissatisfaction, frustration or disinterest, according to researchers who study this yawn-inducing subject.
And some people are more prone to boredom than others. People who have conditions that affect their ability to pay attention (like ADHD) might be more susceptible to boredom, according to a study published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science in 2012. Age might also play a role in determining someone's susceptibility to boredom. Researchers have found that people nearing the end of their young adulthood, around age 22, may be less likely than teenagers to get bored.
"In that age range, the frontal cortex is in the final stages of maturation," and this part of the brain helps with self-control and self-regulation," James Danckert, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, told Live Science in September 2016.