2023-10-13 05:00:12
Do you often find yourself looking at images one following the other without remembering what you saw? If so, it’s probably not because you’re not focused enough, but rather because you’re too focused. In any case, this is what a study carried out 10 years ago by researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says. To carry out their work, the researchers carried out a memory test on different participants. For regarding a minute, they showed the candidates images from a kaleidoscope (an optical instrument reflecting external light to infinity and in color). Participants then had a one-minute break before seeing news stories and having to distinguish them from those they had seen previously.
After the candidates sorted out what they thought they saw, the researchers asked them if they remembered “of many rich details, if they had a vague impression or if they guessed blindly”explains the lead author of the study, Taraz Lee. “And the participants who gave the most correct answers were those who guessed the images”, he says. These results allowed the researchers to realize that the best performing participants were also those who spent more time trying to remember colors and patterns. In other words, those who had thought the least regarding what they were seeing.
At the level of the brain, this was reflected by a lack of activity in the part of the brain called “prefrontal cortex”, namely the rear part of the organ. Conversely, the participants who focused the most on the details of the images, but who retained them less well, were those who stimulated this part of the brain the most. In other words, giving too much importance to details and therefore overstimulating your brain harms its capacity.
To stop thinking too much, researchers recommend, for example, analyzing a situation as a whole each time. That is to say, imagine that your brain is taking a picture of what surrounds it as if it had access to all the information at once.
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