To have weird associations?

[TenForward82]

Fully prepared to be told I'm the only one... But does anyone else have mental images / memories / associations come to mind at strange times?

For example, whenever I chop up broccoli, I'm reminded of a scene from a book I read as a teen. There is NO mention of chopping or broccoli in that scene! But it happens every time. Please tell me I'm not the only one?!

[AVY1]

I do this too but bizarrely it's mainly dreams I recall!

[TheCatOfAthenry]

All the time. The brain is a funny thing...

[TenForward82]

@AVY, yes, it happens to me with dreams a lot too!

[CaoNiMartacus]

I get this. Every time I put eyeliner on, I think of time a security guard yelled at me through a gate for trying to take a photo. Bizarre! Those two things are totally unrelated.

[LTBiscuit]

I've never had this?!

[Malfoyy]

I have random flashes from old irrelevant memories if this is the kind of thing you mean e.g. I was visiting a client today, sitting there talking in their living room and an image of a shoe shop I frequented a couple of times at the Merry Hell shopping centre over ten years ago popped into my head.

I wasn't thinking about shoes, shopping, Merry Hell or hell but was trying to concentrate on the client. Maybe it was the pattern of her dress or her hairdo. Who knows. Happens all the time. Different things obviously.

[AnnieOH1]

Yes although for me it's certain songs and certain scents will take me back to a specific time or place. Some are more obvious than others, like how the smell of car shampoo takes me back to a fling (!) but then others like if I hear One Vision by Queen I'm immediately back on the Tyne bridge and the only time I've ever visited Newcastle.

[TenForward82]

Oh thank god, I thought my brain was broken

[SaucyJack]

If I wake up suddenly from a daytime nap, I always have a particular hymn start playing in my brain.

[Mummatron3000]

Yes! Every time I clean the shower with mildew remover, an image of someone I was at primary school with & her brother pops into my head. It makes no sense!

[Flyinggeese]

Yes a few! Sometimes, in a certain position in my kitchen I think of a particular scene in National Lampoons Christmas Vacation (film). It's strongly associated.

[TheCatOfAthenry]

From a neuroscientific/psychological/psychiatric point of view, it's fairly common.

Without it you get a certain type of rigid thought. On the extreme end of its presence, you get a loosening of associations commonly seen in psychotic illness.

Not that you can't get rigid thinking in psychosis, but this idea part of one of the neurolinguistic theories of schizophrenia.

[TheCatOfAthenry]

*is part of

[TenForward82]

I don't really understand, cat, sorry! Does the phenomenon have a name that you know of?

[MipMipMip]

When I hear the song A Little Respect(Wheatus version) I see the final shot of the hobbits climbing above a cliff in the first Lord of the rings! Always have.

[LTBiscuit]

Is it smells triggering a memory do you think?

[Mulch]

Whenever I hear the word actually I'm reminded of sitting on the floor eating Chinese with ex bf who said actually I will go out after answering the phone

[Blimey01]

TheCatOfAthenry

Come again?? 🤔

[Flyinggeese]

I would love to understand more about this.

I know that I was in that particular spot in my kitchen once when my son had the film on at the same time in the living room and I could hear it.

Why has that one association stuck when there must be thousands upon thousands of other scenarios in life that have happened simultaneously but they don't get linked like this? It's interesting.

[TenForward82]

@LTBiscuit I wasn't aware broccoli smelled when held at arms length... But maybe!

[CoconutPancakes]

Is it a form of synethesia? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

[TheCatOfAthenry]

Very distant memory of psychiatry exams, and definitely can't remember a name, but apparently most of us have these funny links.

An excess of these can be seen in psychosis - someone might see a sandwich and suddenly believe the government is tracking them.

A lack of it can be seen in people with very literal minds, but this seems to be unrelated to the psychosis theory.

[Ginkypig]

I recently read a book where the main character was a researcher who's expertise was memory.

In the book it described this very thing, it said its like a glitch.

Memories are filed and stored by the brain with something akin to tags so ice cream might be recalled by words like beach cold birthday party or smells that you associate with ice cream
but if the brain files certain memories in the wrong file then normal recall will/may not recover the memory but the apparent random thing that at a conscious level has no relevance to the said memory but the brain has filed it in the wrong place so up pops the memory this means though that when you would try to recall that memory in what would seem a normal way it possibly won't be found because the "tags" don't correlate at the unconscious level.

Did I make sense or am I talking shite?

[Assburgers]

I get this all the time. Also when I'm knitting something, whatever I'm thinking about at the time / watching on tv gets 'knitted into it' and the next time I pick the knitting up it's all still there

[TenForward82]

@Ginkypig, it makes perfect sense. Has anyone read Firestarter by Stephen King? It reminds me of the "ricochets" and echoes set into motion when the dad pushes people too far with his mind control!