原创 Getting into slow-motion mode

I'm currently reading Dean Buonomano's very interesting book. It's called Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives.

As it says on the back cover: "To a degree that is difficult for most of us to imagine, much less understand, our successes and failures, joys and sufferings, are the product of protein interactions and electrical changes taking place inside our heads."

I don't want to give too much away at the moment (I will be sure to write a full review when I've finished); suffice it to say that I'm learning a whole lot of stuff I'd never even dreamt of before (which always makes me happy).

The thing is that, reading this book reminded me of something that happened to me long ago. Have you ever had a stressful experience – such as being involved in a car crash – during which everything seemed to slow right down?

People who have not experienced this tend to find it difficult to visualize, but I've talked to quite a few people who say "I know just what you mean!"

This happened to me once when I was a young lad somewhere around 8 or 10 years old. I was racing down the road on my pedal bike when the front wheel hit a rock and I was catapulted over the handlebars. I really must have been travelling at quite some speed because I think I flew about 6 meters before gravity decided to make its feelings known and I became rudely reacquainted with the ground.

Sorry – no points for style!

The picture above isn't me I hasten to add – it's just an image to illustrate a point. As I recall, I was much more graceful as I glided through the air – I can imagine a row of judges sitting at the side of the road awarding points for grace and style.

Max wows the judges!

But we digress... To this day, I recall how the world seemed to switch over into some sort of slow-motion mode. The few seconds I was in the air seemed to take minutes. I could observe all sorts of details about my surroundings, but I was incapable of actually doing anything to mitigate the inevitable end to my flight.

Recently (by which I mean sometime in the last couple of years), I was surprised to discover that, although this effect had been widely reported, no one was 100% sure as to the underlying cause. I had instinctively assumed that in my moment of crisis (perhaps aided by a boost of adrenaline) my brain had entered a "super-charged mode".

It seems, however, that there was an alternate hypothesis, which was based on the fact that in my moment of terror, my brain simply "blanked out" and I was essentially unconscious throughout my flight. The idea here is that immediately after I'd hit the ground and everything had settled down, my brain reconstructed what it "thought" had happened – and that this process essentially took place on a "frame-by-frame" basis, which would explain the slow-down effect.

The reason I say "there was an alternate hypothesis" is that this question was eventually laid to rest. A few years ago, a neurobiologist called David Eagleman based at the University of Texas at Houston came up with an interesting experiment. First, he built a small display that flashed a sequence of numbers too quickly for anyone to see what was going on. Next, he attached this display to the wrist of a volunteer. Finally, he attached a bungee cord to his volunteer's legs and pushed the poor soul off the top of a 150-foot tower. David repeated the experiment with additional test subjects (this is obviously a man of whom one should be wary).

The result? To everyone's surprise, the volunteers discovered that – while plunging towards the ground – they could read the flashing numbers and recall them later. Thus, it appears that – when under stress – our brains (and their associated visual systems) are capable of switching to a higher-level of information-processing activity; so much so that time appears to slow down.

This is one of those experiments that I would love to replicate myself. Not that I wish to hurl myself off the top of a tall tower, you understand – I see myself more in the role of the person doing the pushing, which means I'm looking for volunteers...