Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff. Production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vogelbaum in today's episode is another classic from
Speaker 1: our archives. This one concerns an actual bit of brain stuff.
Speaker 1: Why scratching our heads may have developed as an unconscious
Speaker 1: gesture of thought or confusion? Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here.
Speaker 1: If you've ever had the distinct pleasure of sourcing stock
Speaker 1: photos for any reason, you've likely come across a whole
Speaker 1: lot of laughing women eating salads alone. But you've also
Speaker 1: probably stumbled upon a truckload of people scratching their heads
Speaker 1: to symbolize confusion, deep thought, or perhaps a bad case
Speaker 1: of dandruff scalp dryness. Aside, how exactly did the head
Speaker 1: scratch come to symbolize intellectual processes? Some people believe that
Speaker 1: certain automatic gestures are simply natural expressive motions that are
Speaker 1: Caveman predecessors passed down to us. San Diego Read columnist
Speaker 1: Matthew Alice wrote this about it. One popular explanation for
Speaker 1: any hand to head movements is that their frustrated aggression
Speaker 1: a reversion to the natural movements of our rock throwing ancestors.
Speaker 1: If you watch a small child strike at something, he'll
Speaker 1: raise an arm over his head and bring it forward
Speaker 1: in an arc. It's a natural, unstudied movement, not much finesse,
Speaker 1: but for a caveman, it got the job done. Alice
Speaker 1: also pointed to a possible anthropological explanation for head scratching.
Speaker 1: He wrote, when we're wrestling with some naughty problem, we
Speaker 1: experience feelings of frustration, perhaps some anger, and before we
Speaker 1: know it, our hand flies up in the air. But
Speaker 1: hold it. In these modern times, it's not polite to
Speaker 1: bash the guy who asked the question, so instead we
Speaker 1: deflect attention from the movement and scratch or rub our
Speaker 1: head or chin or neck. In a two thousand nine
Speaker 1: article for Psychology Today, author and former FBI counter intelligence
Speaker 1: agent Joe Navarro wrote, when we are under stress, our
Speaker 1: brain requires a certain amount of hand to body touching, handwringing,
Speaker 1: forehead rubbing, temple massaging, lip touching, etcetera. These pacifiers served
Speaker 1: to soothe the individual when there is negative limbic arousal, fear, stress, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Recent research seems to back up this stress theory and
Speaker 1: add another unexpected layer to the story. In a two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen study, which was published in the journal Scientific Reports,
Speaker 1: Scientists who observed forty five rees monkeys found that scratching
Speaker 1: was more likely to occur in times of heightened stress,
Speaker 1: like standing in the presence of a high ranking or
Speaker 1: unfamiliar monkey. It turns out monkeys who scratched were significantly
Speaker 1: less likely to be attacked by those threatening strangers. Lead
Speaker 1: author Jamie Whitehouse said in the study, as scratching can
Speaker 1: be a sign of social stress, potential attackers might be
Speaker 1: avoiding attacking obviously stressed individuals because such individuals could behave
Speaker 1: unpredictably or be weakened by their stress, meaning an attack
Speaker 1: could be either risky or unnecessary. And meanwhile, itching is
Speaker 1: still a pretty mysterious phenomenon to scientists, but recent research
Speaker 1: suggests the tickly sensation isn't necessarily a mild form of pain,
Speaker 1: but its own distinct occurrence caused by a molecule that
Speaker 1: sends a message from the heart to the spinal cord.
Speaker 1: So while there's no single explanation for this head scratcher,
Speaker 1: you know what was coming, it appears that acting out
Speaker 1: your anxiousness with this stereotypical tick could keep you in
Speaker 1: the good graces of others. Today's episode is based on
Speaker 1: the article why do we scratch our heads when We're thinking?
Speaker 1: On how stuff works dot Com written by Michelle Konstantinovski.
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership
Speaker 1: with how stuff works dot Com, and that's produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Klang and Ramsey Out. For more podcasts from my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.