![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Taking in brain damage, drugs, beauty, infidelity, synaesthesia, criminal law, artificial intelligence and visual illusions. The illusion-of-truth effect highlights the potential danger for people who are repeatedly exposed to the same religious edicts or political slogans. Renowned neuroscientist David Eagleman navigates the depths of the subconscious brain to illuminate these surprising mysteries. The human brain is the most complex thing in the known universe. This is the case even when the experimenter tells the subjects that the sentences they are about to hear are false: despite this, mere exposure to an idea is enough to boost its believability upon later contact. Neuroscientist David Eagleman’s book Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain (2011) is a review of scientific studies about how the brain works and what consciousness really is. And they found a clear result: if subjects had heard a sentence in previous weeks, they were more likely to now rate it as true, even if they swore they had never heard it before. Without letting on, the experimenters snuck in some repeat sentences (both true and false ones) across the testing sessions. In one study, subjects rated the validity of plausible sentences every two weeks. “Another real-world manifestation of implicit memory is known as the illusion-of-truth effect: you are more likely to believe that a statement is true if you have heard it before – whether or not it is actually true. ![]()
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