gideon-examines-quixote - The Monday Morning Memo

Gideon wonders what his windmill will be.

“Using an EEG machine, neuroscientists can measure the fluctuation of brain activity linked to surprise. This measurement is called N400, so named because it is roughly 400 milliseconds after hearing a surprising verbal punch line that your brain registers the surprise on the EEG. The N400 response is primarily associated with linguistic surprise.11 As a general rule, every word elicits an N400 response, but the more uncommon a word is, the greater in amplitude its N400 response. For example, an uncommon word like superfluous creates a much greater N400 response than a common word like chapter. However, the interesting thing about the N400 response is that the contextual anchor is hugely important. While each word has its own inherent N400 amplitude, this amplitude changes dramatically based on how likely the word’s use is in the context in which it’s presented. For example, take the sentence: “I long to marry my one and only true _____.” You wouldn’t be surprised if this sentence ended with love. However, if the last word in the sentence were elephant, you’d be extremely surprised. It would score high on the N400 scale. While elephant itself isn’t a rare word, it’s surprising in the context of the sentence. Dozens of EEG studies12 have documented this phenomenon. The greater the mismatch between the word and the contextual anchor, the greater the amplitude of the N400 response—the greater the surprise.”

- Matt Johnson and Prince Ghuman, "Blindsight," BenBella Books, Kindle Edition. This insight was sent to us by Craig Arthur, Wizard of Ads partner from Townsville, Australia

More Information

Contact Us

Address