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Rapid Cognition

I've been reading about how the body begins to shut down one by one different area of the brain in stessfull situations in order to limit the amount of information the brain has to process. This allows use to focus in a stressful situation on the things that are most important, in an extreme example being survival. In extreme situations are body doesn't deem things like bladder control as a necessary use of energy. that's why many people wet themselves during extreme fear. because more energy is devoted to things like sight in these circumstances our brains can process more frames per second (if you will) that is why time often seems to slow down during things like car accidents, high speed chases, shooting a gun to kill. Interesting enough, the last area of the brain left operating when your heart rate is somewhere up above 200 bpm is, i think, somewhere in the frontal lobe. It's the same area of the brain that a dog uses most of the time.

We become purely instinctual. like wild animals. that's why it is so difficult to argue or reason with a person that is afraid or angry. they're not fully using the logical bits of their brain. it's like trying to argue with your dog.

So next time your stressed "Beware of the Dog" because you just might end up proving Nicolas Cage right:

"Maybe we're just two-legged dogs. Maybe that's our best part."

~Nicolas Cage in Lord of War

posted by Benjamin @ 17.2.06