Am I the only one who does this?

[Carl-Richard]

When I'm writing a post that requires some kind of conceptual thinking, my mind sometimes goes to a specific place in my episodic memory. For example, in my last post, I was writing about the concept of being smart (IQ, etc.), and for some reason, my mind is stuck on this one entrance of a convenience store near my apartment. When I think about experimental designs in psychology, my mind goes to this specific sports field from my younger days. I could probably think about more examples, but you get the point.

Am I the only one who does this? Why does this happen?

Edited December 1, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Buck Edwards]

 

Does it seem something like this - 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthymesia

[Buck Edwards]

Also something like this might be happening too-

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mind-pops/

[Buck Edwards]

You're probably suffering from some sort of a hallucinatory effect due to past drug use, memory dysfunction due to such hallucinatory effect, some mental condition causing interference with memory, unless this is a hereditary medical condition of the brain persistent with other people in the family or community. This could also be the effect of any mental condition suffered previously in childhood. The way the brain developed throughout childhood like a shtick or a tick.. This is just speculation. Also brain scans won't reveal such problems. And as a good reminder, many unique and unknown conditions not externally visible still do not have a classification or label especially if they're rare in a populace. 

[caspex]

It's how my mind works as well. But instead of memories, it goes to the sensation of those memories. Let me explain.

 

Let's say I had experienced a new sensation when entering a large body of water for the first time. My mind would detach the sensation from the memory, and use it as an anchoring point for concepts and thoughts, and connect it with with other anchor points, for easier contemplation.

Your mind probably just uses the whole memory as an anchor. Anchoring is good, it develops your capability of thinking more abstractly as it anchors the abstract for you.

It's probably something your mind just does as you contemplate a lot.

 

[Hojo]

I was leaving the house to go pick up mail.As I was leaving I remembered a time when I started a fire in my house cause I forgot I started cooking, and then i was walking to the post office and half way there I realized that I forgot my box key and I had to walk back. Im not sure but I think my brain was telling me that I was forgetting something.

I think our brains are trying to communicate with us metaphysically so those two things could be a link to your brain trying to tell you something. Think about a metaphysical meaning.In the case above the metaphysical meaning would be forgetting something. Imagination cannot tell you the thing directly because the thing means nothing so I think it uses special hidden ways of communicating even while in this state, from our direct experience of that thing.

Edited December 1, 2023 by Hojo

[LastThursday]

Yes! But not for everything. My thoughts seems to get "stuck" at certain physical locations: one outside the gates to a park when I was young seems very persistent. And that location seems to get attached to abstract thinking. There is a theory (I forget where I read it) that says that all memories are stored spatially like this. Indeed, a "Memory Palace" explicitly uses this technique to remember a large amount of things. And a story is memorable for the same reasons.

If you think about it, it makes complete sense. Certain things happen in certain places, it would seem natural that a location would trigger all the memories associated with that location - even abstract ones. Those associations are two-way.

Edited December 1, 2023 by LastThursday

[Snader]

Happens to me as well. If I read about a specific subject my mind tends to offer me a memory to which I can contrast that subject while I read about it and try to make sense of it. I guess it's just a common unconscious function we have to make sense of stuff, but to be conscious of that is completely another thing. 

I've also become conscious of something like that while playing the piano. Some quick flashes of memories or fictional scenarios appear every time I play a specific sound or a part of a song and it reappears every time I play the sound again, even though I put zero conscious effort to any thinking whatsoever. The scenarios change from session to session depending on what's going on in my life. A bit annoying sometimes.

Edited December 1, 2023 by Snader

[An young being]

6 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

When I'm writing a post that requires some kind of conceptual thinking, my mind sometimes goes to a specific place in my episodic memory. For example, in my last post, I was writing about the concept of being smart (IQ, etc.), and for some reason, my mind is stuck on this one entrance of a convenience store near my apartment. When I think about experimental designs in psychology, my mind goes to this specific sports field from my younger days. I could probably think about more examples, but you get the point.

Am I the only one who does this? Why does this happen?

Are you able to find any relations or links between the specific memory jump and the topic you are thinking?

[mmKay]

@Carl-Richard

It's the same mechanism that Neuro Longuistic Programmong works with. You can "hook" any two actions/stimulus/ideas regardless of coherence.

This may be unconsciously  or consciously,  and accidental or by design.

Examples of "hooking" in above's order.

I allways stub my toe on a specific chair. Eventually the sight of that chair, chairs in general, that room,  toes or pain trigger a "thought" ( Inner vision + Inner feeling ) of pain in your toe.

 

... I want to improve my posture. I hook the action of pulling out my phone with the mental phrase " posture check". I hook the action of touching a door knob with the phrase " posture check". I hook the action of drinking water with the phrase " posture check" . Eventually these relationships slip to your unconscious mind and the results will be automatic.

 

In your case you unconsciously and accidentaly hooked two unrelated " thoughts" ( Inner seeing ) and now you wonder why. They actually may be related in a very chaotic , irracional,  long and complex chain of hooks which is not worth contemplating unless its related with trauma release purposes.

Your case is also similar to imprinting, like relelating the moment you first had a nightmare about aliens ever with My grandmas bed in Poland, as in my case.

 

TLDR: Hooking is one of the many mechanisms our minds operate with, like selective focus , punishment / reward system, coping mechanisms or delayed gratification, etc.

 

Edited December 1, 2023 by mmKay

[Phoebe]

Verbal memory, pattern memory, visual-object memory, infinite types of memory . . . Consciousness can easily create it. There’s nothing pathological about it, though its efficiency might be modulated by infinite mergence. Reality is either-or, both-and, neither-nor, and other distinctions. That’s how God works.

 

[Carl-Richard]

11 hours ago, Buck Edwards said:

Does it seem something like this - 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthymesia

No.

 

11 hours ago, Buck Edwards said:

Also something like this might be happening too-

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mind-pops/

It's not sudden and it's not in the forefront of my attention. It's quite persistent and it's more like a scene in the background that I don't usually notice. It's as if I'm painting the conceptual thinking on top of an episodic canvas. For some reason, it's the same canvas for similar concepts, and it's not obviously relevant to the concepts in question (for example, what does being outside that specific store have to do with being smart?).

 

11 hours ago, Buck Edwards said:

You're probably suffering from some sort of a hallucinatory effect due to past drug use, memory dysfunction due to such hallucinatory effect, some mental condition causing interference with memory, unless this is a hereditary medical condition of the brain persistent with other people in the family or community. This could also be the effect of any mental condition suffered previously in childhood. The way the brain developed throughout childhood like a shtick or a tick.. This is just speculation. Also brain scans won't reveal such problems. And as a good reminder, many unique and unknown conditions not externally visible still do not have a classification or label especially if they're rare in a populace. 

It seems more like a thought than a hallucination.

Edited December 1, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

11 hours ago, Swarnim said:

It's how my mind works as well. But instead of memories, it goes to the sensation of those memories. Let me explain.

 

Let's say I had experienced a new sensation when entering a large body of water for the first time. My mind would detach the sensation from the memory, and use it as an anchoring point for concepts and thoughts, and connect it with with other anchor points, for easier contemplation.

Your mind probably just uses the whole memory as an anchor. Anchoring is good, it develops your capability of thinking more abstractly as it anchors the abstract for you.

It's probably something your mind just does as you contemplate a lot.

I've really only noticed it happening with visual scenes, but it could probably also happen with other sensory modalities.

[Carl-Richard]

On 1.12.2023 at 11:10 AM, LastThursday said:

Yes! But not for everything. My thoughts seems to get "stuck" at certain physical locations: one outside the gates to a park when I was young seems very persistent. And that location seems to get attached to abstract thinking. There is a theory (I forget where I read it) that says that all memories are stored spatially like this. Indeed, a "Memory Palace" explicitly uses this technique to remember a large amount of things. And a story is memorable for the same reasons.

If you think about it, it makes complete sense. Certain things happen in certain places, it would seem natural that a location would trigger all the memories associated with that location - even abstract ones. Those associations are two-way.

Well-established memories get integrated across the cortex, so there could simply be a spatial overlap of the areas coding for the episodic memory and other semantic memories. That would explain the arbitrary nature of the episodic memories that are activated.

But as you say, there can also be more explicit associations. For example, one possible explanation for why my mind goes to this one sports field from my youth when thinking about experimental designs in psychology might be because in that place, I've often engaged in similar abstract tasks, for example learning the rules of a sports game. Learning a sports game seems quite conceptually similar to learning an experimental design in psychology: you have to imagine different people performing different sequential actions according to some specified constraints.

Edited December 3, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

6 hours ago, An young being said:

Are you able to find any relations or links between the specific memory jump and the topic you are thinking?

Based on the two examples that came to mind, the episodic scenery doesn't seem to be obviously relevant to the concepts. For example, that specific convenience store doesn't seem to have anything to do with the concept of being smart.

[An young being]

11 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Based on the two examples that came to mind, the episodic scenery doesn't seem to be obviously relevant to the concepts. For example, that specific convenience store doesn't seem to have anything to do with the concept of being smart.

This sounds interesting, and I am not able to find  much information related to this. It might be based on the same mechanism as the one where we use cues or triggers to remember stuff, but only that here the cue is subconsciously created. Since you said that you get the same picture whenever you think of something similar, this might well be the case.

But the interesting question is, on what basis the subconscious mind creates the connections. It is definitely a very complex connection, since you are not consciously able to figure it out.