Our bodies and brains are capable of some pretty amazing things, but the how of much of it has become obscured over the years due to folklore, superstition, and old-timey science. With modern medical science and especially more knowledge of the brain, we have started to delve much deeper into our understanding of how we work, and the results are pretty fascinating. In this list, we will explore the crazy reasons behind the fascinating things our brains and bodies do.
Related: Top 10 Current Human Extremes
10 Do You Sneeze When You See a Bright Light? It is Probably Genetic
Most of us sneeze when something irritates our nostrils, and our body decides it is time to remove it with earth-shattering force. This is a natural occurrence, and while annoying, we blow our nose and clean it with a Kleenex or rag and move on with our day. However, some people don’t sneeze for just the usual reasons as the rest of us do, and it can both be extra annoying and also downright mystifying for those who deal with it. What we are referring to is something called photic sneeze reflex, or PSR, and it causes some people to sneeze when they see a bright light.
There are multiple theories about why it occurs, but all of them boil down to some kind of wires getting crossed in our brain, where something involving the optic nerve or other eye-related processes in the brain get improperly linked with the part of the brain that controls sneezing. Now, while we don’t know all the mechanisms behind it yet, a Chinese study from 2019 has shed light on why it happens to some people and not others. The study of over 3,000 people discovered that it is a group of genes working in tandem responsible for the reflex.[1]
9 Why We Cringe When We Hear Our Own Recorded Voice
Everyone has had that moment where, for the very first time, they hear their own voice recorded and played back to them and feel absolutely horrible for it. The feeling of creeping embarrassment is only worse if other people are around—and then the self-doubt really starts: Do I really sound like that? Am I that annoying? We cringe as we now imagine how others hear us and what they must think of our embarrassing voice. However, the only one making fun of us in that situation is ourselves because we are the only one hearing it wrong.
The thing is, when we speak, we do not actually hear a proper playback of our own voice. It is both taken in by our ears from the outside and also vibrates through our skull, up to our ears, distorting what we are actually hearing. However, if you really want to get a better idea of how you actually sound without playing yourself back awkwardly on a recording, you can try covering your ears and speaking out loud. This can help isolate the sound and give you a better idea of your real, awkward voice.[2]
8 Your Brain Actually Prioritizes Negative Experiences
Most of us go through life figuring that while we do not remember everything, we probably remember most of the really important stuff and that our brains really do a pretty good job of recalling both bad things that happened to us and also good events that occurred in our lives. After all, we want to be happy people, so it would make sense for our brains to remember at least as much good as bad, right?
Unfortunately, this is where our brains betray us and aren’t nearly as helpful as you might imagine. While our brains do remember some good events as well, they actually prioritize negative memories over positive ones. Researchers believe this is an evolutionary defense mechanism so we can remember things that might cause us harm or injury to better avoid them in the future.
However, this is also a double-edged sword, as researchers also believe this can lead to depression and just feeling bad or negative in general. Of course, this does not mean we do not have any conscious choice. We could counter this by choosing to dwell more on positive memories over negative ones to help retrain our thinking.[3]
7 Getting a Runny Nose and Fever Is Not Directly Caused by a Virus
The common cold and the fever that sometimes comes with it are a common enough part of life that all of us have experienced many times. We tend to think little of it when we are well. Then, when we are not, we are generally more concerned with how miserable we feel than speculating on the finer mechanisms of why our noses run and why we get a fever. Most people just assume they are a symptom of the virus, but it is a bit more complicated than that.
The Interesting thing is that these symptoms, and indeed most symptoms of the common cold, are actually a byproduct of our body’s own defense mechanisms making us feel temporarily miserable as it tries to flush out the virus. The nose actually produces more mucus and either sneezes or runs in order to trap and expel the harmful pathogens from your body.
As for the fever, unless it is getting dangerously high, doctors warn against trying too hard to make your fever disappear. This is because it is also part of your body’s defense mechanism, and it is your body trying to heat itself up to kill the virus within.[4]
6 Poor Memory Recall & Our Distracted and Disconnected Modern World
It has become incredibly common in the modern age for people who have no known cognitive problems, drug use, or other issues to regularly complain about how their memory is rather poor. It is pretty common for people to struggle with remembering even basic things like other people’s phone numbers and addresses. Of course, part of this is due to the fact that with so many things automated and at our fingertips, we do not feel the need to train our memories as much.
However, it goes even deeper than that. You see, once we remember something permanently, it is there for good, barring serious brain damage. The thing is, the way our memory stores the information is what makes it so hard for us to recall it when we need it. One of the most common struggles in the modern world is knowing you remember something but not being able to locate it in your brain. This is because humans evolved to encode memory addresses based on the content of what was going on around them.
This made more sense when things were simpler, but with our disconnected modern society, where there are so many layers, it makes it harder to store the memories in a relevant way without doing so purposely. This is coincidentally the solution: You simply have to start training your brain to consciously attach relevant clues when you remember something. Rote memorization isn’t enough.[5]
5 Some Older People Really Can Tell Bad Weather Is Coming (Sort Of)
Ever heard an elderly or older person you know tell you that they know bad weather is coming and that they know because they can “feel it in their bones”? We have probably all met at least one person in our lives like this, and for each of them, it may be a different bone. Some may claim to feel it in their hip, others in their leg, their toe, or the like. Some people are openly skeptical of this, but the individual will insist that there is indeed something going on, and they have one over on the local weather station.
Now, the actual reality is that there are layers of truth here. Some older people will indeed start to have issues that leave small cavities in their bones (such as osteoporosis), and this hollow space can cause some people to feel changes in barometric pressure. However, this is also the reason we say “sort of” as a qualifier, as barometric pressure is just one part of weather prediction and is not a guarantee you will be right about the coming rain.[6]
4 Why People Think Disabled People Have Super Senses
When someone loses all or part of an important sense, such as becoming deaf or legally blind, people will make comments like, “Well, at least your other senses will get a lot better to compensate, right?”. These comments are usually well-meaning and typically come from nice people just trying to think of something positive to say about a bad situation. However, some disabled people tire of this trope, if for no other reasons than it is not, strictly speaking, entirely accurate.
While it sounds nice, our bodies simply do not have the capacity to make physical evolutionary changes of that kind, even in the face of a severe loss of senses. It is completely scientifically inaccurate that someone who loses a sense is going to have physical changes that make their other senses better.
However, there is some understandable reason for the confusion. Those who lose a sense may develop better neural pathways in their brains to prioritize the remaining senses they have and make more use of them, but that does not mean their hearing actually got physically better. Daredevil’s use of echolocation is real, but his super hearing is not.[7]
3 Your Brain May Choose Amnesia After a Traumatic Experience
Now, we want to be clear that this does not necessarily cover all use cases. There are some situations where someone has lost memory after a traumatic event because that event involved a severe blow to the head. In fact, most people imagine that the vast majority of situations where someone does not remember a traumatic event are due to said brain trauma. However, there are plenty of cases where the individual did not suffer a serious enough blow that you would expect memory loss. Still, they do not remember the traumatic event.
This all comes down to our body’s own defense mechanism and our subconscious desire to protect ourselves from the worst of the worst. Many times, when we go through something really horrible, we don’t remember much of it, not because we forgot it, but because we never remembered it to begin with. In other words, if something is awful enough, our brain may simply choose to stop processing what is happening consciously at all, leaving nothing for us to forget in the first place.[8]
2 What Fakery Our Subconscious Brains Can and Cannot Detect Is Fascinating
Have you ever been watching a big-budget CGI movie, and no matter how much you were enjoying it, you couldn’t really suspend your disbelief and get in the moment, even briefly, because your brain knew the whole thing was not real? You may have also noticed that this is not necessarily a phenomenon you see in only low-budget CGI productions—it occurs with the big ones, too. So, what gives?
Well, it turns out that our brains are actually pretty good at detecting when CGI is being used in movies as opposed to practical effects. Your brain does this subconsciously, but it has little, if anything, to do with the overall quality of the CGI clip. You see, the problem is that our brains don’t expect anything that actually exists to be perfect. Even with attempts at adding imperfections, much of the best CGI still just looks far too clean and perfect for our brains to accept.
This is kind of like in The Matrix, wherein the robots realized a world that was a true Utopia would not be accepted by the humans. However, this does not mean we are good at detecting deep fakes. Studies already show that we think we are good at it, but we are actually not good at it at all.[9]
1 You Can Fail A Breathalyzer Without Consuming Alcohol
Imagine you are driving along on the road as normal as any other day, and then you see flashing blue lights behind you. You do not recall breaking any traffic laws, nor have you done anything illegal or consumed any drugs. However, the officer is indeed pulling you over, and the next thing you know, you are being breathalyzed on the side of the road and charged with a DUI. This was the experience of a Belgian man a few years ago who ended up with a DUI charge despite swearing up and down he had consumed no liquor.
Now, of course, the police had heard this all before and did not believe him, but in the end, they ended up having to eat crow. It turns out the man has something called auto-brewery syndrome, where your gut actually turns carbohydrates into alcohol through fermentation. As you might imagine, this disease is incredibly rare, so the man had to get a plethora of proof to get his case tossed. In the end, he had to get three different doctors to independently verify his condition before the judge dismissed the case.[10]