A recent study conducted in the United States has revealed that the human brain interprets experiences by dividing the 24 hours of a day into different sections. Researchers at Columbia University in the USA have discovered that the human brain divides the 24 hours into chapters similar to a book.
Transitioning from one place or activity to another visibly marks a noticeable change in brain activity in new sections. The division into chapters clearly assists the brain in making sense of the ongoing flow of life. Previous studies have not been clear on how the brain precisely decides where each chapter begins and ends. The new research shows a personalized process based on what is important to the individual and what their priorities are.
Assistant Professor Christopher Baldassano, from the Psychology department at Columbia University, stated, “We wanted to challenge the theory that sudden changes in brain activity when starting a new chapter in our day are solely due to external factors. The brain actively divides our life experiences into meaningful parts for us.” The research team prepared 16 short audio narratives, each containing one of four settings (restaurant, airport, supermarket, conference room) and one of four scenarios (breakup, proposal, business deal, meeting).
A total of 415 participants were invited to listen to these narratives, with brain activities monitored in some cases and volunteers pressing a button in others to indicate when a new chapter of the story began. In some instances, researchers guided participants to focus on different aspects of the study (such as focusing on the proposal or meal orders in a story about a marriage proposal at a restaurant).
The preparation had an impact on the neurological definition of new chapters, showing that the brain adjusts its organizational techniques based on what we currently consider most important. It was noted that existing priorities and goals, as well as past experiences, could play a role in this process. The researchers, in their published article on the study, used the phrase: “These results identify mechanisms by which distilled past experiences in schematic event scenarios alter how we construct our current perceptions for a realistic experience.”