Greetings from The Office Microwave!
Trivia to kick things off: Is it spelled "Berenstein Bears" or "Berenstain Bears?"
Heat up some leftovers, sit back, and enjoy. |
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As the Office Microwave, I keep an ear to the streets and hear the best conversation topics for your work friends, for your boss, for your latest client, and everyone in between. Here is this week’s totally not boring Work Talk. |
For your amateur psychologist |
TLDR: Memories are easily triggered by smells. This is because signals from the olfactory
system travel quickly to the brain. |
We often have strong memories associated with certain smells, and this isn’t a coincidence.
According to neuroscientists, smell and memory are so closely linked because, anatomically, smells have a quicker route to the amygdala and the hippocampus. These regions of the brain are essential for forming memories and emotions.
A study in the The American Journal of Psychology shows that memories triggered by smell are more emotionally evocative than others, which also explains why they can feel more intense. |
TLDR: DĂ©jĂ vu translates to "already seen," but the phenomenon may actually occur when we haven't seen something before. |
The French words déjà vu translate to "already seen.” Déjà vu seems to occur suddenly and without explanation, but there are several theories on why we get that specific, eerie feeling that we have experienced the present moment before.
The term was coined by French philosopher Émile Boirac in a letter to the editor section of his journal Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger in 1876. Boirac believed the sensation was caused by an event unlocking a lost memory.
Another theory: Neurophysiology researcher Robert Efron wrote in 1963 that déjà vu might be caused by a sort of error in your brain. Signals to the brain enter the temporal lobe twice—once from each side. Efron believed that if those two signals are not synchronized properly, our brain might associate them as separate memories, making us feel as though the same signal was received in the past.
In my opinion, the most interesting theory comes from modern-day cognitive psychologist Akira Robert O’Connor. His theory is that the medial temporal lobe, which works to encode and retrieve memories, can fire at incorrect times. The brain searches for past memories that match the current moment, but when none are found, a person is left with the temporary shock associated with déjà vu. So this would mean déjà vu occurs when we haven’t seen something before.
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TLDR: The Mandela Effect is a common term for a false collective memory. |
The most widely discussed memory phenomenon is the Mandela Effect—when a large group of people share a false memory. This term was coined by "paranormal consultant" and author Fiona Broome in 2009. She used it to describe how she believed Nelson Mandela had died in prison, when he actually died in 2013. Some of these false memories that are commonly shared online seem a little manufactured. But I still believe that the Fruit of the Loom logo was at one point a cornucopia. And I definitely remember it as “Oscar Meyer,” and not “Mayer.” |
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You can view the bouncing DVD logo whenever you want here.
Another beautifully mundane Twitter bot to break up your feed: Stamps Bot shares stamps from around the world.
Ahead of the upcoming Indiana Jones film, here is how the iconic “boulder roll” scene was made without anyone getting hurt.
McDonald’s just released a Grimace Game Boy Color game designed to run on 25-year-old hardware. THIS is marketing.
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FOR YOUR WAY OUT: 5 MEMES |
That’s it for this week’s Work Talk. These topics are meant to be shared with your co-workers, so if you liked it, forward this email to you best friend or colleague and have them subscribe here. And if you made it this far, reply back to this email with a meme I should put in the next send. Until next week… — the Office Microwave |
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