This is your sense of your bodyвЂ™s position space and what itвЂ™s doing, but unfortunately itвЂ™s just not very accurate. ItвЂ™s your 'proprioception' that is giving us problems here. Scientists donвЂ™t agree on how many senses humans actually have, but they all agree that itвЂ™s more than five. One of the senses youвЂ™re using is touch, clearly, but the second sense is less obvious because itвЂ™s not one of the classic list of five that you might have learned in school: taste, sight, touch, smell, and sound. You are actually using two senses in this experiment and theyвЂ™re not playing nicely together. This is called the Aristotle illusion, after his written description of the phenomenon more than 2,000 years ago. You should start to feel two little paper balls in your hand. Roll the ball around a little between your fingers. Put your crossed fingers on top of the ball so it nestles between them.Д¦. Cross the index and middle fingers of your other hand.Д¤. Place it on the palm of your open hand.ДЈ. Removing all meaning from your brain is a pretty good way to relax.Дў. This might help to explain the effectiveness of mantra meditation. The words lose their meaning inside your head. But itвЂ™s the firing neurons that are literally how you understand the meaning of the words! So when the neurons stop firing, you stop understanding. These firing neurons are literally you understanding the meaning of the words the semantics of the words.Д«ut as is so often the case in the brain, when your neurons fire repeatedly they become temporarily inhibited they stop firing. Normally, hearing a word or phrase causes a particular pattern of neurons to fire in your brain. Repeat the phrase in your head and it will start to lose its meaning вЂ“ which would normally be something like вЂњhilarious show on Radio 4 about scienceвЂќ.

Try it now with the words Domestic Science. Basically, if you repeat a word or phrase enough times, it starts to sound really weird and lose all its meaning.

ItвЂ™s all to do with something called 'Semantic satiation'.

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