Without meaning to beat this subject into the ground, and thus cause trauma to anyone, there is a word or two to add, if anyone cares. I think that maybe intense, I'm-gonna-die, fear may cause us to slip into our reptilian brain a little more than usual. And this part of our noggin experiences the world very differently from our mammalian one. Our hunter-gatherer brain takes over, dulling pain, sharpening survival thoughts, increasing strength and mercifully blocking out some of the bad stuff. People with synesthesia literally can hear colors and taste shapes and other neat things. [two books for further reading: The Man Who Tasted Shapes by Richard Cytowic and Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens by Patricia Duffy] Maybe intense fear can slip a regular Joe or Jane into a synesthetic state. Cytowic suggests something like this when he theorizes, if I remember correctly, that synesthetes have a reduced ability for the mammalian brain to filter out the primitive perceptions of the reptilian brain. The fear part is my own theory. Based on my own imagination and nothing more. Jim Tibensky _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Jan 29 2002 - 13:53:40 PST
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