Ever notice how when you are in a crowded resataurant, say, and there is a general rumble of conversation and you are enjoying your lunch and not paying attention to any of it and then suddenly a word or phrase jumps out?  It is usually a phrase that you have some special familiarity with like maybe the name of somebody you know or a subject you have some connection to. As soon as you hear it, it grabs your attention and yanks you out of your daydream.

It is as if in the background your brain all along has been monitoring everything going on around you and filtering all of the noise until it notices something relevant it wakes up and tunes in.  That’s very interesting because it means that there is so much information that you are processing without ever being conscious of it.  That’s a lot of untapped processing power going on in everyone’s head at all times.  (This is saying more than the usual observation that our senses take in a lot of information that we do not process.  Because in order for your brain to do this, it has to actually interpret the words that it is taking in and connect it to stored memories.  So this is real thinking and learning that is happening without us paying attention.)

But here’s the really interesting thing.  Your brain is taking you ever-so-slightly back in time.  When this happens (pay close attention the next time it happens to you) you do not have the sense that ‘oh while i was busy studying my salad someobody just said “Garrison Keillor” .’  Instead you hear the phrase in real time.  It is as if your brain knew in advance that something interesting was about to be said and woke you up just in time to hear it.  But of course that is an illusion.