Mind Pops; August 2012; Scientific American Magazine; by Ferris Jabr; 1 Page(s)

In everyday life, people often search their memory for specific information: Where did I leave the car keys? Did I really turn the oven off? Other times they actively reminisce about the past: Remember that crazy night out last week? Not all recall is a choice, however; some forms of memory are involuntary. Perhaps the most famous example is a scene from French novelist Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time (also called Remembrance of Things Past). As the narrator drinks some tea and eats a small, plump sponge cake known as a madeleine, the taste brings up a memory of eating the same treat at his aunt's house when he was young.

Researchers are beginning to study a related form of memory called mind pops, fragments of knowledge, such as words, images or melodies, that drop suddenly and unexpectedly into consciousness. Unlike the Proustian example, mind pops, a term coined by University of California, San Diego, emeritus professor George Mandler, seem completely irrelevant to the moments in time and thought into which they intrude. They are more often words or phrases than images or sounds, and they usually happen when someone is in the middle of a habitual activity that does not demand much concentration. (For example: you are doing the dishes when the word orangutan springs into your mind for no obvious reason.) Most notably, identifying a trigger for a mind pop in the surrounding environment or even in previous thoughts is extremely difficultthey seem to come out of nowhere.