Trick me, trick my brain

Have you seen illusions where what you see is not what it seems? Don’t we wonder how we could see things that are or aren’t there?

The diagonal lines are actually parallel to each other.

All the lines in this "distorted" square are straight lines.

A friend, SL, once told me that when we take medication like Panadol as a remedy for headaches, it doesn’t work to attack the pain. What it does is to “trick” the brain to tell it that it feels no pain. When it successfully does that, then we feel relief from the headache. Isn’t it a wonder how easily we get “tricked” by drugs?

Now imagine the cases of multiple personality disorder. How amazing can one’s brain get, to be able to store different personalities in one body? What’s more amazing is how one personality could speak in a language that is totally unknown to another personality. How could our brain work to segregate such knowledge? It’s as if it compartmentalizes our abilities and knowledge and keep them separate for different identities.

If our brain is capable of tricking us in such a complex manner, what else can’t we be tricked into? Hypnotism, that’s a form of tricking the mind into a subconscious state to reveal a conscious memory.

There’s also a kind of therapy for people who are mentally disturbed to “erase” that part of the memory that is very painful. How on earth did people discover such clever methods to use the brains?

I’m dumb-founded. But, it’s Friday and I should take it easy and not ask myself questions I can’t answer. But if anyone has something to share, I would sure like to know.

So, TGIF, everybody! Have a great weekend ahead.