Disengaging the conscious mind
Our lives are a succession of repeating elements, from autonomic blinking and breathing to our willed activities.
Novel undertakings stress us, but with repetition they become familiar, routine and comforting.
The first time I walked from London Bridge to Paternoster Square it seemed to take an age. There were lots of sights to take in, and some uncertainty over the route. Each time I repeat the route my perception of how long it takes shortens, though in objective terms the elapsed time is unchanged.
I put this down to the way our brains work. They're basically learning engines. Laying down a new set of memories keeps the conscious mind engaged in the activity. With each repetition fewer new observations need to be committed to memory, and the conscious mind is increasingly freed to drift off to other topics.
When I was a teenager I did a morning paper round. At 6am I would arrive at the newsagents and be given my bag with its complement of papers. Within a month I'd memorised the round, and which papers and periodicals each house took. I knew the homes where there were dogs, and the vagaries of the various letterboxes some of which were liable to snap viciously shut on the fingertips of the unwary. I found myself operating on a kind of autopilot, frequently arriving back at the newsagents with an empty bag but no conscious memory of the preceding hour.
In later years I would regularly drive the 200 miles from London to Leeds, which immediately afterwards could only be recalled as a series of flashbacks - the service station I'd taken a break at, the stop start tailback by junction 26, the car that had undertaken dangerously, and the maniac who tailgated so close he should have just parked on my back seat. All the habitual actions of driving (stopping at lights, navigating roundabouts, changing lanes, indicating, turning) had vanished from memory.
Repetition is key to a great number of human amusements. Music contains a whole raft of different repeating elements : the drum beat, the base rhythm, the guitar melody, and the rhymes and flow of the lyrics. Rhythms get the toes tapping, hips swinging, and the head nodding. It is seductive to succumb and lose yourself in the music and dance.
Recurring actions relax and gratify. Stroking a dog, scratching an itch, the sensation of a sock sliding back and forward over the sole of the foot when walking in wellington boots, massage, sex.
Rhythms are hypnotic - the cliché of the swinging watch and the hypnotist's lulling voice. These both rely on the brain rapidly exhausting the uniqueness of the experience, disengaging the conscious mind from the present allowing the hypnotist to engage directly with the mind at a deeper level.
The brain likes repetition because it is predictable, and being able to anticipate what will happen has a clear evolutionary advantage. We've been shaped by natural selection to spot patterns and repeat successful actions. Our likes and dislikes stem from repeated experiences that are weighed for their perceived positive or negative outcome.
Our brains don't always get it right, perhaps because the algorithm is based on short term outcomes. Eat sugar, the taste is good, and a positive emotional response develops - we like sugar. A year later we're swaddled in fat, but the emotional response to sugar remains unchanged. In addicts, the mind gives an excessive weighting to one or two learnt patterns, and rather than being useful behaviour pathways they become seemingly inescapable ruts.
When you stop to consider that all your personal preferences are built up from the mind's cumulative weighting of life experiences you start to wonder why you have certain strong predilections.
As a child I recall being bemused when I was asked "what's your favourite colour?" Not really having a preference I picked a colour at random, green, and each subsequent time I was asked I would trot that out as my response. In my late twenties I realised that I had developed a very strong preference for rusty umber shades of orange. I can't think of a good reason why I love that colour, but just looking at those shades I feel physically relaxed, warm, happy and satisfied.
Novel undertakings stress us, but with repetition they become familiar, routine and comforting.
The first time I walked from London Bridge to Paternoster Square it seemed to take an age. There were lots of sights to take in, and some uncertainty over the route. Each time I repeat the route my perception of how long it takes shortens, though in objective terms the elapsed time is unchanged.
I put this down to the way our brains work. They're basically learning engines. Laying down a new set of memories keeps the conscious mind engaged in the activity. With each repetition fewer new observations need to be committed to memory, and the conscious mind is increasingly freed to drift off to other topics.
When I was a teenager I did a morning paper round. At 6am I would arrive at the newsagents and be given my bag with its complement of papers. Within a month I'd memorised the round, and which papers and periodicals each house took. I knew the homes where there were dogs, and the vagaries of the various letterboxes some of which were liable to snap viciously shut on the fingertips of the unwary. I found myself operating on a kind of autopilot, frequently arriving back at the newsagents with an empty bag but no conscious memory of the preceding hour.
In later years I would regularly drive the 200 miles from London to Leeds, which immediately afterwards could only be recalled as a series of flashbacks - the service station I'd taken a break at, the stop start tailback by junction 26, the car that had undertaken dangerously, and the maniac who tailgated so close he should have just parked on my back seat. All the habitual actions of driving (stopping at lights, navigating roundabouts, changing lanes, indicating, turning) had vanished from memory.
Repetition is key to a great number of human amusements. Music contains a whole raft of different repeating elements : the drum beat, the base rhythm, the guitar melody, and the rhymes and flow of the lyrics. Rhythms get the toes tapping, hips swinging, and the head nodding. It is seductive to succumb and lose yourself in the music and dance.
Recurring actions relax and gratify. Stroking a dog, scratching an itch, the sensation of a sock sliding back and forward over the sole of the foot when walking in wellington boots, massage, sex.
Rhythms are hypnotic - the cliché of the swinging watch and the hypnotist's lulling voice. These both rely on the brain rapidly exhausting the uniqueness of the experience, disengaging the conscious mind from the present allowing the hypnotist to engage directly with the mind at a deeper level.
The brain likes repetition because it is predictable, and being able to anticipate what will happen has a clear evolutionary advantage. We've been shaped by natural selection to spot patterns and repeat successful actions. Our likes and dislikes stem from repeated experiences that are weighed for their perceived positive or negative outcome.
Our brains don't always get it right, perhaps because the algorithm is based on short term outcomes. Eat sugar, the taste is good, and a positive emotional response develops - we like sugar. A year later we're swaddled in fat, but the emotional response to sugar remains unchanged. In addicts, the mind gives an excessive weighting to one or two learnt patterns, and rather than being useful behaviour pathways they become seemingly inescapable ruts.
When you stop to consider that all your personal preferences are built up from the mind's cumulative weighting of life experiences you start to wonder why you have certain strong predilections.
As a child I recall being bemused when I was asked "what's your favourite colour?" Not really having a preference I picked a colour at random, green, and each subsequent time I was asked I would trot that out as my response. In my late twenties I realised that I had developed a very strong preference for rusty umber shades of orange. I can't think of a good reason why I love that colour, but just looking at those shades I feel physically relaxed, warm, happy and satisfied.
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