what explains the phenomenon where a words starts to sound weird after you say it a bunch, or like a nose starts to look odd if you really look at it, when most of the time you notice anything abnormal?
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This is called “semantic satiation”.
From Wikipedia’s article on the subject:
*An explanation for the phenomenon is that, in the cortex, verbal repetition repeatedly arouses a specific neural pattern that corresponds to the meaning of the word. Rapid repetition makes both the peripheral sensorimotor activity and central neural activation fire repeatedly. This is known to cause reactive inhibition, hence a reduction in the intensity of the activity with each repetition.*
So, LY5: the repetition tires out the brain, like exercising a muscle makes it tired.
The phenomenon is known as semantic satiation and we don’t really know what actually causes it but it has been theorized to be related to the brain reducing the intensity of the process that connects sounds to their meaning when repeated.
In terms of language it’s called “Semantic Satiation”. It’s all theory at this point, but the explanation I’ve heard is that when we think about a word there is a pathway in our brain that gets activated. Like a tiny car goes from point A to point B when we read “Apple” and think “Apple”. But I only have so many tiny cars in my brain garage so if I keep reading “apple” over and over again eventually there are no cars left and my brain doesn’t think “apple” any more. In the real world, we don’t have tiny brain automobiles, but we have chemicals and reactions in our brain cells that do need time and resources to “Reset” after being used.
Not sure about the physical “my face looks funny” part, I’d imagine it’s partly the above but also an element of imagination. Your brain is wired for problem solving and if you keep staring at your nose eventually your brain is going to try and start trying to figure out what’s so damn interesting about your nose that you keep staring at it. etc.
I don’t think it’s what you’re referring to, but your brain can also filter out “unnecessary” information when it wants to. For example, you can see your nose in the corner of your vision but you don’t notice it constantly because your brain filters it out. If you “try” and notice it, sure enough *there it is* and it’ll be annoying as heck.
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