Why can't I stop procrastinating? Why do I stick out my tongue when I concentrate? Why do I often forget why I walked into a room?
Australian scientist Dr Jen Martin reveals the answers to a range of human "oddities and quirks" in her new book Why Am I Like This?: The Science Behind Your Weirdest Thoughts and Habits.
Photo: Supplied
Why Am I Like This? evolved from Dr Martin's weekly Weird Science segment on the Melbourne radio station 3RRR. She founded the science communication program at the University of Melbourne and runs the blog espressoscience.com.
Dr Martin, who is an ecologist, first set out to be a science communicator after making an interesting discovery about the mating habits of Australia's mountain brushtail possum.
Her revelation that the nocturnal marsupial had the unusual ability to be either monogamous or polygamous was useful to not just fellow researchers, she realised, but also farmers, land managers and people involved in conservation.
"I knew that there were a heap of people who didn't have a background in science who would also be interested and find that what I'd found out valuable, and that really prompted me to start thinking, well hang on, why aren't more scientists trained in communicating with different audiences.
"I can read the kind of dense, jargon-laden literature that's out there, work out what the cool story is, and then find a way to either speak about that or write about that in a way that I hope everybody feels interested in."
Many people didn't enjoy studying science at school or were told they were no good at it, Dr Martin says, and she hopes to connect people to its universal relevance.
"Our whole world is full of science and I think we should all be able to feel like we belong in that world of science."
Dr Jen Martin answers some common questions:
Why can't I remember my childhood?
Most people don't have any memories before the age of three, Dr Martin says, and some have none before the age of seven.
One suggestion as to why is that we don't yet have the words with which to describe our experiences, she says, although tudies with children who are born deaf suggest lack of language isn't the cause.
A better theory, Dr Martin believes, is that when we are very young, our brains are too busy to retain much information.
"One suggestion is that as new brain cells are being formed, new nerve cells are being formed in the hippocampus so much in these early years, that the circuits that encoded particular memories ... get constantly disrupted by the new brain cells. So as we develop new circuits, new memories, we just lose those earlier memories that were there for a while.
"We just can't hold on to them because we're constantly creating space to learn new things."
Why can't I stop procrastinating?
We all procrastinate due to a constant battle between those two parts of our "incredibly complex" brains, Dr Martin says.
The more ancient part of our brains known as the limbic system can be viewed as an extension of our inner child, she says, always looking for the next fun or enjoyable thing to do.
We have to train our limbic system to listen to the more recently evolved and responsible part of our brain known as the prefrontal cortex which governs decision-making and planning.
This training is quite an involved task that takes some time, Dr Martin says, but the longer you put it off, the harder it will get.
Her favourite piece of research about procrastination is a study that showed if we can go easy on ourselves for procrastinating, we discourage ourselves from doing it.
"If we forgive ourselves, then we are less likely to procrastinate in future. so I think it's all about just being a little bit kinder to ourselves."
Why do I stick out my tongue when I concentrate?
Many adults have this habit but some may be ashamed about it or train themselves not to do it, Dr Martin says.
Although it's a really useful signal to send to those around us of 'Please don't disturb me. I'm concentrating really hard. I'm busy', having our highly sensitive tongues outside of our mouths may also make it easier to concentrate.
"Just stop for a moment and feel your tongue in your mouth. It's incredibly sensitive and has an incredible number of nerves. So it's not just there for tasting things, but it's always giving you kind of a constantly updated math like a mental map of the inside of your mouth. And so that means that your tongue is constantly sending quite a lot of information to your brain. It's quite a lot of input.
"When we have a difficult task, either something that takes a lot of concentration or a lot of dexterity, we need to minimise all of the input that we're getting. So we just have that little bit more capacity to concentrate, just like people often close their eyes if they really want to concentrate for a moment.
"It just allows us to concentrate that little bit more, just giving us a little bit more brain power, which totally makes sense."
Why don't I remember why I walked into this room?
Due to a psychological phenomenon known as The Doorway Effect, we know that people are two or three times more likely to forget what they were going to do after walking through a door than covering the same distance without a door involved.
Mental overload is a big part of why, Dr Martin says.
"Our brains are full all the time. There's so much going on. We have to divide our memories up into separate little episodes, separate little events. Our brain has to have a way of recognising which memories or which thoughts are the most relevant and the most important at any one time because we simply can't have all of the information in our brains accessible to us, [available for] instant recall all the time.
"It turns out that doorways have become in this modern world a signal to our brain that the previous episode is over, what you knew in that space is no longer the most relevant, you need to have your brain ready to take in new information in this new space."
"Doorways didn't exist when we evolved. Our brains take that shape of a doorway to say 'That thing is over, it's all new' and we forget why we went into a room. It's odd but so deliciously quirky. I love it."
