Psychogenic Shivers ⚡️
🧠 Psych - 146/200
Hello Reader,
Hope you are having a fine day. If not, here’s to having one of the best day! 🥂
Also, I have been thinking of starting a Podcast around psychology inked in our life.
Would that be something you would like? Do you have any idea? Please share!
Today, let me tell you about why there are moments when we get chills, even though you are not cold.
What is it?
Generally, Shivering is a muscle tremor that produces heat which allows the body to maintain its core temperature in a changing world. Humans also shiver in the case of a fever, as heat slows down the rate of pathogen growth and improves the immune response of a living body.
Goosebumps or piloerection (the bristling of hairs) can be side effects, as the muscle tremor causes hair to become erect which creates a thin layer of air, thus minimising heat loss.
Strangely enough, humans also shiver independently of any such events. For instance, certain social situations seem to provoke the shivers.
Why do I need to know?
There is an interesting proposal by David Webb which states that psychogenic shivers correspond to an event where the measure of the total similarity between all sensory signals and available mental models reaches a local peak value.
This can be expressed mathematically in terms of the rate of change of a function of conditional similarity. In this context, any change in learning corresponds to an aesthetic emotion.
When the function reaches a local maximum, its derivative tends toward zero, and learning slows down. This corresponds to a ‘turning’ point in your total knowledge. Ten years ago, Perlovsky predicted that such an event should involve knowledge about other minds and about the meaning of life.
You can read there full proposal in the reference link below.
References & Studies: -
https://www.all-about-psychology.com/psychogenic-shivers.html
The Psych Handbook is your guide to learn about 100+ biases & explode your brain! 🤯
Liked this? Why not join Psych on your favourite platform for more interesting stuff?
Short informative videos on The Brain Psych 🧠 [Checkout the first short!]
Visually beautiful posts on Psych (@thebrainpsych) [Do you like reels?]
Looking for previous issues? Take a look at the Archives.