Among the many mysteries of my brain is this: Where do spontaneous thoughts come from?<\/p>\n
A recent example.\u00a0 A couple days ago I’m doing nothing in particular, letting my mind wander, when this song<\/a> pops into my mind:<\/p>\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Through the magic of YouTube, I was able to pull the now 20+(!) year-old song and cruise memory lane.\u00a0 But it begs the question: Where did this thought come from?<\/p>\n<p>I consider this to be an okay song, but it has never been one of my favorites (Jesse not being my kind of female).\u00a0 I haven’t heard it on the radio in ages.\u00a0 Unless I subconsciously heard it on TV or YouTube, it’s been many months or years since I listened to it.\u00a0 Yet there it was, playing in my musical mind.<\/p>\n<p>One <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cmu.edu\/news\/stories\/archives\/2014\/may\/may27_spontaneousthoughts.html\" target=\"_blank\">research paper<\/a> on random thoughts posits the following:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We are aware of the output of spontaneous thoughts, but lack insight into the reasons why and processes by which they occurred. Rather than dismiss these seemingly random thoughts as meaningless, our research found that people believe, precisely because they are not controlled, that spontaneous thoughts reveal more meaningful insight into their own mind \u2014 their beliefs, attitudes and preferences \u2014 than similar, deliberate thoughts. As a consequence, spontaneous thoughts can have a more potent influence on judgment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So there you have it.\u00a0 Researchers haven’t figured out where spontaneous thoughts come from, but they must be important, because we don’t know where they come from.\u00a0 They tell us something about ourselves–we just don’t know what it is.<\/p>\n<p>Makes sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2014\/08\/spontaneous-thoughts\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to Spontaneous Thoughts\"><p>Among the many mysteries of my brain is this: Where do spontaneous thoughts come from? A recent example.\u00a0 A couple days ago I’m doing nothing in particular, letting my mind wander, when this song pops into my mind: Through the magic of YouTube, I was able to pull the now 20+(!) year-old song and cruise […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2557","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2557"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2560,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557\/revisions\/2560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Through the magic of YouTube, I was able to pull the now 20+(!) year-old song and cruise memory lane.\u00a0 But it begs the question: Where did this thought come from?<\/p>\n<p>I consider this to be an okay song, but it has never been one of my favorites (Jesse not being my kind of female).\u00a0 I haven’t heard it on the radio in ages.\u00a0 Unless I subconsciously heard it on TV or YouTube, it’s been many months or years since I listened to it.\u00a0 Yet there it was, playing in my musical mind.<\/p>\n<p>One <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cmu.edu\/news\/stories\/archives\/2014\/may\/may27_spontaneousthoughts.html\" target=\"_blank\">research paper<\/a> on random thoughts posits the following:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We are aware of the output of spontaneous thoughts, but lack insight into the reasons why and processes by which they occurred. Rather than dismiss these seemingly random thoughts as meaningless, our research found that people believe, precisely because they are not controlled, that spontaneous thoughts reveal more meaningful insight into their own mind \u2014 their beliefs, attitudes and preferences \u2014 than similar, deliberate thoughts. As a consequence, spontaneous thoughts can have a more potent influence on judgment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So there you have it.\u00a0 Researchers haven’t figured out where spontaneous thoughts come from, but they must be important, because we don’t know where they come from.\u00a0 They tell us something about ourselves–we just don’t know what it is.<\/p>\n<p>Makes sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2014\/08\/spontaneous-thoughts\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to Spontaneous Thoughts\"><p>Among the many mysteries of my brain is this: Where do spontaneous thoughts come from? A recent example.\u00a0 A couple days ago I’m doing nothing in particular, letting my mind wander, when this song pops into my mind: Through the magic of YouTube, I was able to pull the now 20+(!) year-old song and cruise […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2557","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2557"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2560,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557\/revisions\/2560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}