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Seeing in slow motion

 but moving fast
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Whenever I have a car or motorcycle crash, I experience the pre-impact part in slow motion. I understand this is a common phenomena.

There seemed to be no external strobe light that suddenly came on, so the effect must be due to the release of the brain's natural opiates or whatever.

How can one turn this on suddenly at will so we can enjoy: a) winning fights b) catching balls, etc. c) enjoying the moment a moment longer?

—thantox, Apr 06 2001

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       As I understand it, this is the sort of thing that fighters (I'm thinking martial types) experience all the time. It would seem to be a product of training ones reflexes, among other things.
—absterge, Apr 06 2001
   

       how do you see slower without lagging further and further behind'normal speed' vision?/unless your vision speeds up afterwards ,to compensate
—technobadger, Apr 06 2001
   

       huh. Yeah, adrenaline would also seem to have something to do with it. tb, that sort of is what happens; you see, it's a matter of perception. The apparent sl o w m o u s u allyseemstobefollowed by a flurry or blur, until 'normal' perception of time is regained. Funny that when remembering these things, you might be able to play them back excruciatingly slowly in your head, but at that moment of impact or what have you, things get fuzzy.
—absterge, Apr 06 2001
   

       PeterSealy: one of each. Adrenaline may be the substance, but the experience is cool, relaxing and detached.   

       technobadger: i don't know, I think time slowed down. After impact, things even out, as the rough bit is fortunately all over quite quickly (milliseconds).
—thantox, Apr 06 2001
   

       I think it must have something to do with some sort of sampling rate inside the brain. In a panic situation, our brain is going to want to take in as much information as possible to help it sort things out in a moment or two. Therefore it goes in to overdrive trying to process information, we can think more thoughts in a shorter time and therefore our timesense is messed up.   

       Actually, I've noticed this phenomenon nearly anytime something happens that doesn't conform to normal everyday goings-on. I think its just our brains trying to cope with new and possibly dangerous events.
—centauri, Apr 06 2001
   

       now THAT is interesting, centauri! Perhaps it is that with a given, normal sample rate for each individual, said individual also has a normal loop length (or a number of them? say, 1sec, 10sec, 10min, etc?) for recording things into the brain in short-term memory. When the brain attempts to sample higher for more info in that short loop, it must start discarding information immediately thereafter in order to prevent an overflow error? I'm sure there's gotta be some real interesting stuff about this on the internet...
—absterge, Apr 06 2001
   

       I don't think that the increased sample rate is for the purpose of sorting things out later, but instead giving you a better chance of surviving things *now*. Chances are that any physical traits we have that show themselves in emergencies were developed while we were still living in caves. The discussion group 'after' the mammoth stampede was probably secondary to our survival than getting out of the way in first place.
—blahginger, Apr 07 2001
   

       Hmm. Does this mean that we can all re-enact the Matrix? Because if it does, I have found my vocation in life.
—oobersteph, Apr 07 2001
   

       what about rewind?
—AfroAssault, Apr 07 2001
   

       bravo, steph! i'll help. and absterge and centauri, i think you're on to something there. it'd give an extra explanation for amnesia- the one being that your brain is temporarily overloaded, and the other being your brain has most likely just been knocked loose and chances are you'll feel like your train of thought is flying off the tracks.
—dragonette, Aug 10 2001
   

       //Whenever I have a car or motorcycle crash //
Thantox, I'm concerned. How often do you get to experience seeing in slow motion? And more importantly, how's the insurance payments?
—Lucky_Setzer, Aug 10 2001
   

       > what about rewind?   

       Introducing new Brain TiVo(R): your Personal Cognitive Recorder. Had a good date? Record it to TiVo(R)'s built-in two terabyte hard drive. Just finished a really good ham sandwich? Eat it again without messy regurgitation! Available now for only $14,995.95 in small, unmarked bills left behind the waste bin on the corner of 5th and Short, or simply send your credit card number to my email address!   

       TiVo. Thinking *your way*.
—jester, Oct 11 2001
   

       i thought this only happened in films.
—eddidaz, Apr 07 2002
   

       I wonder if for autistic people time is experienced in slo-mo constantly.
—entremanure, Apr 08 2002
   

       I once read a (somewhat crappy) novel about a doctor who figured out how to alter his nervous system so that he experienced everything in 'slow motion' relative to everyone else because he had sped his own reaction timing up incredibly. Something about packet transmission across the synapses or some such. Of course, he quit being a doc and became a world champion athlete. It ended badly for him though because of some nasty side effect.
—bristolz, Apr 08 2002
   

       buggar, you completely spoilt the end of the film for me now. thanks a lot bris.
—po, Apr 08 2002
   

       ... I'll throw the ball and I want you to run way out ... past it.
—reensure, Aug 22 2002
   

       Just need to reconfigure the IRQ interrupts in your brain, simply put vision as a lower priority.
—BinaryCookies, Aug 22 2002
   

       Lowering the priority of vision processing would not produce slow motion but merely lower the number of samples per given timeframe.
—bristolz, Aug 22 2002
   


 

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