The Doctor Will Shrink You Now – Brain Quirks We All Have — Dave’s Diary

I find much about psychology to be fascinating.  The idea of trying to understand why people do what they do is

always more of an interest than following rats in a maze but both are part of the package when pursuing a degree.Psychology often confirms our intuitions about how our minds work, but it offers quite a few surprises as well--like these brain quirks you probably didn't realize you had:

Your short-term memory has a max capacity of seven
Humans have three forms of memory: sensory, long-term and short-term. Long-term memory is like hard-drive space, while short-term memory works like a very small RAM. This short-term memory can hold only about five to nine (average is seven) items at a time. Seven---like in a phone number!

Chartreuse is the most visible color
Yellow-green, chartreuse, sits right in the middle of the frequencies of visible light. Your eyes have receptors for blue, green and red. Being in the middle, yellow-green triggers the most of these receptors to fire, making it easy to spot. In some cities, firetrucks have been changed from red to a yellow-green color to make them more visible. I stumbled into a club in the bay area once with a bunch of Army buddies called the Chartreuse Moose! You don’t want to know.

Your subconscious is smarter than you are
Or at least more powerful. In one study, a square was assigned to a location on a computer screen through a complex pattern. After watching it, people began to get results better than chance of picking out where the square would pop up next. But when asked to consciously determine the pattern, even given a few hours, nobody could do it. Just like me to be smarter than me. Huh?

You have two nervous systems
One set controls excitation and the other controls inhibition. If you hold out your hand, you might notice minor tremors. This is caused by slight, random differences in the amount each of the two systems are firing. It is NOT however like running a secret second set of books at your business! Only one set of nerves is firing there and it could get you fired!

Your memory isn't great either
Studies have shown that people are highly likely to misremember past events. Even worse, it is incredibly easy to suggest a memory that never happened. This is why so-called "repressed" memories should be given a lot of thought. It is far easier to suggest a memory of an event never happened, then it is to recover one that actually did.  In fact, I remember that I already posted this, but I really didn’t!

 Long-term memory shuts down during sleep
The parts of the brain that transfer information to long-term memory shut down while sleeping. This is why dreams quickly fade away after you wake up. Although you may have several dreams in a night, they aren't being recorded into long-term memory. Generally only the fragments of a dream left in short-term memory have a chance to be encoded after you wake up. Ever see the movie Memento?  Ever see the movie Memento?