How Our Brains Trick Us When We Try to Communicate

Two ongoing developments in neuroscience push us to realize that our lived experience of the world is not really what’s happening. Our minds are playing tricks on us; our brains are limited in various ways. These distortions have implications for how we communicate.

First of all, we believe we must be good storytellers because of the emotions that storytelling evokes. That’s how we hope to be memorable for our audiences: Memories are coded through emotions. But the research offers two alternate models for how memory actually works, and it turns out that in a very real sense, the purpose of memory is to be able to forget.

How can this counter-intuitive statement make sense? One model of memory suggests that it is stored in ensembles of neurons, known as “engram cells,” and a memory occurs when a particular ensemble is activated. But just as importantly, when those neurons are re-programmed in a new ensemble to remember something else, the old ensemble gets overwritten and is no longer accessible. The memory is still there; it’s just not retrievable.

Another model ties memory to location—memory is more geographically focused than necessarily detailed in other ways. So when you are not reminded of a place or location, or you no longer frequent that place or location, you begin to forget that memory.

This model suggests that, at the very least, communicators might pay more attention to the choreography of their delivery. In the moment, communicators should work on making the connection between what they’re saying and how they present themselves explicit.

Part of your brain is engaged in constantly mapping where you are and storing that map in memory. Use that map to improve your retention of the ideas and concepts you wish to remember. And take advantage of it to better communicate with others.

Overall, though, we’re fighting a rearguard action. The brain is set up to move on, to be plastic, and to make new memories, writing them over the old. So, we don’t actually forget the old memories, per se; we just no longer have access to them. Presumably, it’s a way to stay open to new experiences, to be ready to adapt to new circumstances. In order to have our audiences remember us, we have to work hard against this tendency of the brain to shed the past. We are in danger of very quickly becoming last year’s memory of a conference experience in a place we will never visit again.

Second, as another study shows us, the brain is not set up to allow us to be fully present, taking in everything in the moment and soaking up a new experience. Instead, the brain is busy scanning the world around us, looking for danger, and predicting what’s about to happen based on patterns of meaning it has already established as relevant. It is so busy doing this that it misses a good deal of what’s actually happening around it, and it fills in the gaps with memories and educated guesses about what might be going on.

If that audience in front of you seems only partly present, that’s because it is. Those brains sitting there in the dark are constantly casting about for danger and ignoring everything else. A safe brain is a relaxed, inattentive brain.

That doesn’t bode well for getting your message or intention across. Unless you can cast what you are saying as a way to navigate danger, those overstimulated, safety-obsessed brains are going to check out.

What are we to do, then, with these literally absent-minded brains? As communicators, how does understanding the neuroscience help us connect with our audience? Knowing how fleeting both attention and memory are should motivate us to keep our messages as simple as possible and focused on basic issues of safety, location, and presence. Anything more complicated is in danger of not being heard at all—and certainly not remembered.