this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024
581 points (87.5% liked)
memes
10220 readers
1627 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.
Sister communities
- !tenforward@lemmy.world : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world : Linux themed memes
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world : for those who love comic stories.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Since birth our brains are wired to look for faces. It helps with survival when the helpless wiggly thing bonds with the giant who is full of hormones telling them to protect it.
As we grow we learn to recognize other patterns, which help us find food, be safe, find a mate, etc. Our brains are constantly looking to match everything we see with something from a previous experience. Which is unfortunately one of the places PTSD can pop up. Say you had a traumatic experience - you may not remember seeing someone wearing a red hat just prior to something terrible happening, but your brain might. In the aftermath it's possible that you find yourself uncomfortable around someone wearing a red hat but can't figure out why. You may not remember, but your brain does and thinks it's helping by alerting you too a problem.
Pareidolia is the word you are looking for.