Study reveals the brain splits the day up into chapters like a book

A new study conducted by researchers at Columbia University has explored how the brain operates throughout the day, with indications that it splits time up into chapters, similar to a book.

Published in Current Biology, the researchers delved into the characterisation of human life and how change is processed when people change their tasks or location in the day. While segmentation is an important factor in helping the brain make sense of life, researchers revealed that the process is personal and dependent on what is important to us.

Christopher Baldassano, an associate professor of psychology at Columbia University, explained they wanted to "challenge the theory that the sudden shifts in brain activity when we start a new chapter of our day are only being caused by sudden shifts in the world – that the brain isn't really doing anything interesting when it creates new chapters, it's just responding passively to a change in sensory inputs."

Baldassano said the research found that "this isn't the case."

"In fact, actively organizing our life experiences into chunks that are meaningful to us," he added.

Their findings came off the back of 16 short audio clips that featured one of four locations: a restaurant, an airport, a grocery store, and a lecture hall. They also included one of four scenarios: a breakup, a proposal, a business deal, and a meet-cute.

Over 400 participants listened to the clips and their brain activity was monitored. They were asked to press a button when they believed a new part of the story was being told.

Researchers primed some of the participants to concentrate on certain aspects of the study.

Through doing so, the team learnt that the brain adjusts to focus on the most significant elements at that moment. This can often be influenced by current priorities as well as past experiences.

"These results identify mechanisms by which past experiences, distilled into schematic event scripts, change the way that we construct our present perceptions for realistic experience," the researchers wrote.

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