Наш мозг отрицает собственную смерть. 😳Возможно, поэтому мы так сильно погружаемся в работу, постоянную проверку соц сетей, встречи…чтобы не думать о необратимом..

на такой веселой ноте почитаем сегодняшнюю статью😁

Doubting death: how our brains shield us from mortal truth

The brain does not accept that death is related to us. We have this primal mechanism that means when the brain gets information that links self to death, something tells us it’s not reliable, so we shouldn’t believe it.

Being shielded from thoughts of our future death could be crucial for us to live in the present. The protection may switch on in early life as our minds develop and we realise death comes to us all.

Scientists asked volunteers to watch faces flash up on a screen while their brain activity was monitored. The person’s own face or that of a stranger flashed up on screen several times, followed by a different face. On seeing the final face, the brain flickered with surprise because the image clashed with what it had predicted.

Various words appeared above the faces on screen. Half of the time these were death-related words such as “funeral” or “burial”. The scientists found that if a person’s own face flashed up next to deathly words, their brain shut down its prediction system. It refused to link the self with death and no surprise signals were recorded.

This suggests that we shield ourselves from existential threats, or consciously thinking about the idea that we are going to die, by shutting down predictions about the self, or categorising the information as being about other people rather than ourselves.

Arnaud Wisman, a psychologist at the University of Kent, found that in modern societies people embraced what he called the “escape treadmill”, where hard work, pub sessions, checking mobile phones and buying more stuff meant people were simply too busy to worry about death.

NEW WORDS:
🧠primal — первоначальный
🧠shield — защищать, заслонять
🧠flash up — вспыхивать
🧠flicker — мерцать, мигать
🧠clash — сталкиваться
🧠existential threats — экзистенциальные угрозы
🧠embrace — принять
🧠escape — побег, спасательный
🧠treadmill — однообразный механический труд, беговая дорожка

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/oct/19/doubting-death-how-our-brains-shield-us-from-mortal-truth