In 2006, for example, a team of Israeli scientists discovered that when people lose themselves in a task—be it playing cards or having sex or climbing a mountain—a part of the brain called the superior frontal gyrus starts to deactivate. The superior frontal gyrus helps produce our sense of self, that introspective feeling of self-awareness, which, as the study’s lead researcher, Ilan Goldberg, told New Scientist, is not always useful: “If there is a sudden danger, such as the appearance of a snake, it’s helpful not to stand around wondering how one feels about the situation.”
