But despite the fact that it can be disturbing, these fleeting illusions are generally harmless. Today, neuroscientists are trying to evoke the illusion in healthy subjects — which they think might shed light on the way we create our sense of self in the here and now.
This time there could be no mistake about it: it was neither more nor less than a pig, and she felt that it would be quite absurd for her to carry it further. Wonderland is full of shapeshifting characters, including the grotesque Duchess and her crying baby. Before she knows it, the baby has turned into a pig. Elsewhere, Alice plays croquet with flamingos as clubs, and meets the smiling Cheshire cat, whose grin remains even as his body disappears.
Neuroscientists think that the phenomenon arises from the way the sleeping brain consolidates memories; as it cements the recollections, it draws links between different events to build the bigger story of our lives. When cross-referencing a memory about a pig with an event about a baby, for instance, both become merged in the dreamscape to surreal effect. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost. It begins in the first chapter, when Alice reads a poem called the Jabberwocky.
Alice hits the nail on the head: the poem somehow tickles our sense of grammatical correctness even though the words themselves are nonsense. More fundamentally, Alice then meets Humpty Dumpty, and their conversation explores the nature of words themselves.
This is an ancient philosophical question that dates to Plato. Previously, scientists had assumed that would be impossible — words are arbitrary and there should be no innate meaning in sounds. If given different shapes to label, most people choose kiki for a sharp object and bouba for a round one. Whatever the cause, it means that you can sometimes guess the meaning of foreign words with accuracy better than chance; it can also influence the nicknames given to people , so that, like Humpty Dumpty, they actually reflect your appearance.
Later on in her journey, Alice has lengthy discussions with the White Queen. In fact, her comments on memory are themselves surprisingly prescient. One possibility is that we imagine the future by pulling apart our recollections and then piecing them together in a montage that might represent a new scenario.
Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. Continuing her exploration of human imagination, the Queen extolls the virtues of thinking about the impossible. London: Penguin, The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll. Alexander Woolcott. New York: Random House, Pall Mall Gazette February 12, : 4. The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll. Stuart Dodgson Collingwood. London: Fisher Unwin, The Theatre.
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