What's Going On?

### Cold Open

Jason Silva: "Every day, whether you're fighting through traffic, or just trying to find the light switch in the morning, there's a hidden system keeping track that's busy keeping track of everything going on around you. It's called spatial awareness, and it's built into your brain. If I asked you how good your spatial awareness is, chances are you'd say it's pretty sharp. After all, if you weren't aware of your surroundings, you'd ever really know where you were. Which is why your brain is constantly tracking what's going on around you, behind the scenes. So you can focus your attention on more important things. For instance, you may have noticed quite a few changes happening around me."

### Questions

So why are slower changes so easy to miss?

Is vision really that important to your spatial awareness?

## Games

### Game #1: Right in Front of You

Spot the changes in the image right in front of you.

Result: You notices some changes, but finding them all was difficult. By slowly taking away the changes, your brain missed them.

So: Your brain prioritizes more sudden changes.

### Game #2: Double Dutch Time

Count how many times the dancers in green jump.

Result: While you may have gotten the jumping right, you missed a whole slew of other changes happening right in front of you.

Why: Because your brain was so focused on the jumping. There's far too much information and you miss some crucial information. What we don't pay attention to, we don't see.

### Game #3: Hands & Body

Touch the tip of your nose, then touch the fingers one by one on your left hand with your right while doing it with your eyes closed and hands up in the air.

Result: With eyes open, the challenge is easy enough. But with the eyes closed, the challenge becomes harder at fast speeds. But why are these people failing that seems so simple?

Why: Proprioception(A type of sixth sense), senses the position of your body in space, allowing you to eat popcorn while watching TV without taking your eyes off the screen. But Proprioception depends on vision, and this led to you failing the game with your eyes closed.

### Game #4: Get to the Gold

Remember the way to the gold in a mineshaft.

Result: You've got a keen sense of direction if you said C. However, not everyone got it.

So: With repetition and practice, you can get better at sense of direction. But it isn't a flawless system unless you put your senes to work.

### Game #5: Remember Me

Remember the items in a room and figure out which are missing and play along with volunteers.

Result: You didn't remember too much, probably due to short-term memory.

Now trying attaching a sense memory to the objects to remember that.

Result: You probably did better, with the sense memory mnemonics.

So: Even though you can use mnemonics with senses and memory to help, you want to be insured if anything goes missing if you get robbed.

### Game #6: Find The Museum

Remember the directions to a museum.

Result: You probably did pretty well at remembering the route, giving you great spatial awareness. However, once again, you missed the true test.

How and Why: While you listened to the directions, you didn't watch the tourists pickpocket a stranger.

Hey, did you hear a train whistle 3 times this episode.