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Jack Albertson
bismillah rahmani rahim



Registered: 04/14/06
Posts: 10,065
Loc: SOLARIS
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Why Time Seems to Slow Down in Emergencies
#7748558 - 12/12/07 10:03 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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In The Matrix, the hero Neo could dodge bullets because time moved in slow motion for him during battles. Indeed, in the real world, people in danger often feel as if time slowed down for them.
This warping of time apparently does not result from the brain speeding up from adrenaline when in danger. Instead, this feeling seems to be an illusion, scientists now find.
To see if danger makes people experience time in slow motion, scientists at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston tried scaring volunteers. However, roller coasters and other frightening amusement park rides did not cause enough fear to make time warp.
Instead, the researchers dropped volunteers from great heights. Scientists had volunteers dive backward with no ropes attached, into a special net that helped break their fall. They reached 70 mph during the roughly three-second, 150-foot drop.
"It's the scariest thing I have ever done," said researcher David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine. "I knew it was perfectly safe, and I also knew that it would be the perfect way to make people feel as though an event took much longer than it actually did."
Indeed, volunteers estimated their own fall lasted about a third longer than dives they saw other volunteers take.
To see if this meant people in danger could actually see and perceive more—like a video camera in slow motion can—Eagleman and his colleagues developed a device called a "perceptual chronometer" that was strapped onto volunteers' wrists. This watch-like device flickered numbers on its screen. The scientists could adjust the speed at which numbers appeared until they were too fast to see.
If the brain sped up when in danger, the researchers theorized numbers on the perceptual chronometers would appear slow enough to read while volunteers fell. Instead, the scientists found that volunteers could not read the numbers at faster-than-normal speeds.
"We discovered that people are not like Neo in The Matrix, dodging bullets in slow-mo," Eagleman said.
Memory trick
Instead, such time warping seems to be a trick played by one's memory. When a person is scared, a brain area called the amygdala becomes more active, laying down an extra set of memories that go along with those normally taken care of by other parts of the brain.
"In this way, frightening events are associated with richer and denser memories," Eagleman explained. "And the more memory you have of an event, the longer you believe it took."
Eagleman added this illusion "is related to the phenomenon that time seems to speed up as you grow older. When you're a child, you lay down rich memories for all your experiences; when you're older, you've seen it all before and lay down fewer memories. Therefore, when a child looks back at the end of a summer, it seems to have lasted forever; adults think it zoomed by."
This work could help better understand disorders linked with timing, such as schizophrenia. Still, in the end, "it's really about understanding the virtual reality machinery that we're trapped in," Eagleman told LiveScience. "Our brain constructs this reality for us that, if we look closely, we can find all these strange illusions in. The fact that we're now seeing this with how we perceive time is new."
-------------------- Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say "I think," "I am," but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose.Man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time TRANSCEND
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pong
kretan




Registered: 02/09/06
Posts: 4,311
Loc: west coast
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Re: Why Time Seems to Slow Down in Emergencies [Re: Jack Albertson]
#7748594 - 12/12/07 10:17 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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what about sports.
when good players get in the zone i know that they can see and feel everyone on the field, and make moves so fast that it seems impossible.
soccer footwork is one example. on defense i used to be able to see in "slow motion" . i dont think it was an illusion but rather extreme concentration and awareness.
find anything on that?
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Jack Albertson
bismillah rahmani rahim



Registered: 04/14/06
Posts: 10,065
Loc: SOLARIS
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Re: Why Time Seems to Slow Down in Emergencies [Re: pong]
#7748604 - 12/12/07 10:22 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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that's what i was saying, you can physically feel different when youre in that zone. i dont really understand why they didnt say anything about that.
-------------------- Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say "I think," "I am," but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose.Man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time TRANSCEND
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fapjack
Title



Registered: 07/26/07
Posts: 16,574
Loc: Central New Jersey
Last seen: 3 years, 10 months
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Re: Why Time Seems to Slow Down in Emergencies [Re: Jack Albertson]
#7748618 - 12/12/07 10:27 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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I went to blockbuster when I was shrooming to rent a movie, we walked around looking at tapes for what seemed like 3 hours. When we left, we looked at the clock when we got into the car, we were in there for 10 minutes. I also have been out clubbing on mdma for 8 hours and it felt like an hour. Chemicals definitly mess with your sense of time, and I guess adrenaline is no different.
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Jack Albertson
bismillah rahmani rahim



Registered: 04/14/06
Posts: 10,065
Loc: SOLARIS
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Re: Why Time Seems to Slow Down in Emergencies [Re: fapjack]
#7748624 - 12/12/07 10:30 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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But they measured the brain activity and said nothing happened. I figured adrenaline would increase your heart rate, thus increasing brain activity.
-------------------- Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say "I think," "I am," but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose.Man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time TRANSCEND
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pong
kretan




Registered: 02/09/06
Posts: 4,311
Loc: west coast
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Re: Why Time Seems to Slow Down in Emergencies [Re: Jack Albertson]
#7748660 - 12/12/07 10:39 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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if they could monitor the brainwaves on a football/soccer pitch i bet the best players would have the highest activity.
but their experiment was whack. having people read flashing numbers while falling?
plus they knew "it was perfectly safe"
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Muppet
Nomadic Jester



Registered: 08/14/02
Posts: 28,785
Loc: (523) 327-2836
Last seen: 13 years, 11 days
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Re: Why Time Seems to Slow Down in Emergencies [Re: pong]
#7748798 - 12/12/07 11:14 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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yeah...no shit
there's gotta be a better way to test that one
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Ravings of a Madman
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