Why A Brush With Death Triggers The Slow-Mo Effect | Hacker News Reader

Why A Brush With Death Triggers The Slow-Mo Effect

npr.org

134 pointsjohns54 comments

For years I'd heard this and thought it was similar to being "in the zone". I've done various martial arts since I was a kid and found "the zone" to be an absolutely awesome state of mind to be in, it's like your brain is running in super fast mode and solutions to complex problems seem obvious and come immediately...but that state of mind doesn't seem to actually be the same as Slow-Mo.

I discovered this after unfortunately finding myself on the periphery of a very heavy fire fight in Baghdad in 2006 as an unarmed contractor without my body armor handy. A co-worker and I headed for cover about 500 ft. behind a wall to wait it out when BAM a bullet penetrated the wall in front of us, flew past us and struck a wall next to our heads.

I remember this clearly because as soon as the bullet broke through the wall everything went super slow-mo. I mean, like 10,000 frames per second Slow-mo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt6eyDYeJr0). The bullet had obviously slowed down and had started tumbling because it sounded like the most pissed-off bee as it headed our way. More interestingly, and without any control of my body, my eyes immediately went into tracking mode and I was able to follow the bullet all the way across the space we were in -- about 500 ft. I honestly have no idea how long it took to travel that distance, but it felt like a full 10 minutes even though it couldn't have been more than a fraction of a second.

The overwhelming memory though was how my body felt like it was stuck in molasses as my brain desperately tried to tell me to hit the deck and I simply couldn't move as fast as my brain seemed to be working. I remember being absolutely frustrated with this little fact.

As soon as the round hit the wall with an appropriate ping! sound, time went back to normal and the adrenaline hit like a rocket and we high tailed it out of there to better cover.

I also remember just being mentally tired the rest of the day after that. Could have been the adrenaline rush but I think it's from the slow-mo effect.

FWIW, in the book Getting Things Done, David Allen mentions being "in the zone" (or "mind like water," which he mentions comes from karate) is a key to being more productive.

It makes sense our flight-or-fight instinct could put us in the zone, much like your comment describes.

I've been trying to harness that power (but in more non-life-threatening situations, like at work).

Interesting that you point out the delay between your brain giving an order and your body responding. I've had similar experiences where initially there seems to be plenty of time for your mind to assess the situation & make decisions. In my experience the slow-mo effect stopped immediately after I started reacting to the danger. I guess your mind gets in a kind of detached mental state in order to build a window of opportunity to make the right decision.

The slow-motion effect may be the result of the mind mapping the experience to a single timeline afterwards.

I was at the Enschede fireworks disaster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enschede_fireworks_disaster) ten years ago and experienced what the article calls turbo perception. It is not like overclocking a single processor by pressing a turbo switch. A better metaphor may be temporarily having access to more processors than normal that operate in parallel. In a short time frame you make a lot more observations and decisions than normal to improve your situation, apparently some simultaneously. Because it is difficult for the mind to deal with parallel timelines of observations it maps the observations to a single timeline which results in the slow-motion effect that people recall afterwards.

When it happened to me, afterwards, I remember my mind uncontrollably playing back the event over and over again from different points, all in slow motion for a day or two. It was exhausting and I couldn't get anything else done that required any kind of thinking. It finally settled down like ripples in a pond.

Did you experience the same thing?

I remember as a kid, I found a big, sloped tree stump in town that if I ran and used it as a ramp, I could get enough height in a jump to be pushing my landing abilities near their limit. I wasn't a big time thrill seeker, but that became a habit for the wonderful free fall feeling and time effect. It didn't happen every time, but the slow-down effect was common enough that I got curious and wondered how it worked... was it just a trick of memory afterward or was it something in the moment?

I realize it isn't really good science, as I have only the subjective experience of the tests (so be it, I guess), but I did what I could on the repeatability front (sprained ankles and scratches paid with the kind of childhood zeal unhampered by considering possible consequences). When in that moment, I had enough mental time to think "no, not just a memory effect, this is really going on right now... and yeah, still going on, and still falling" several times before landing.

As an aspiring rational empiricist, I will force myself to give up this belief if need be, but a few tests aren't enough to do that. There are plenty of i's and t's to dot and cross in the experimental construction and interpretation first.

Jumping from playground swings is another good way to experience falling and associated slow-down effect.

Of my numerous brushes with death, this has only happened once or twice for me. The most memorable was when I was kite-mountainboarding. I had jumped around 12ft in the air but a line had wrapped around my harness - instead of acting like a parachute, the large kite was below me and pulled me violently into the ground. Time slowed enough for me to reason about the situation and realise that I had to absorb some of the impact with my legs if this was to turn out well. I didn't get it quite right (should have taken more impact with my legs) and I broke my back, but I've recovered now.

However, what I remember as much as the slowing of time is how calm I felt during it all. Reasoning and decision-making were the only things in my mind in a really dangerous situation. It was really nice feeling! When time slows in these situations, I wonder if anyone ever panics. I guess it would be rather counter-productive.

I've heard this is why time seems to pass faster as we age as well. Not because we experience time as passing faster, just that fewer things are novel as we have more experiences.

In other words, fewer memorable things happen to a 40 year old than to a 10 year old... unless that 40 year old is about to be hit by a bus.

Time really pass faster when you get older, subjectively speaking; When you are 2 years old, the last year amounted to 50% of your whole life. The year between 40 to 41 is 2% and from 80 to 81 only 1%.

Interesting consequence: If one wants to have the subjective perception of a longer lifespan, one should do more and more novel things more often as they age.

This paper is from 2007, and has been written up many times since.

Including an alleged debunking from Feb 2008:

http://express-press-release.net/46/Eagleman%20%60Time%20Slo...

I've heard this from so many people and so many reputable sources that I feel as if I'm the only person that has never experienced this phenomenon. In fact, when I've been in an instance where I've feared for my life (and there have been several) it seems to me that time speeds up and things happen so quickly I only have time to react and not to think. I only seem to recognize something happened after the fact.

That sounds more like a "in the zone" experience than a "slow-mo" experience. Where you body and mind are some kind of hyper rhythm and things just...happen without your conscious input.

I think there's a major difference between 'doing' and 'experiencing'. I know e.g. that in a skydiving emergency my actions have always been automatic & fast, but the experience of the situation made it seem like it lasted for ages.

I've always thought most of this effect was in the second stage of memory where it gets solidified into medium or long term memory instead of the few seconds of real time memory that we use for executing all our daily tasks. The reason I think this is that sometimes when this effect has triggered for me I have remembered great detail about the few seconds before the event actually occurred.

For example, a few years ago my wife fell off a balcony while holding our baby. At first I didn't know what was wrong, I only heard her call out and wandered out curiously to see what she wanted. While wandering out I had no idea how serious it was - but I have the "Slow Mo" effect for that precursor time as well.

What happened?! Was she okay? Did she protect the baby?

Yes - thank goodness - they both had some superficial scratches and the wife had bad bruises but she completely protected the baby (it wasn't a second story balcony, more like a deck that protrudes over a steep decline). Of course, we didn't know either of them were really ok until 8 hours in emergency ward and scans were taken of spine etc. etc. One of the worst days of my life.

I heard this in the morning, and I'm glad it got on HN, because Radiolab is so great. If you liked this at all, you should really check out their long shows, they are almost all gold. Their style works a little better in a long form I think.

Hmmm.. Makes me wonder, why we do the opposite in video games - slo-mo is in effect when an enemy is about to die... But in fact it should be the opposite.

My father had exactly the same experience - he was in the car my grandfather was driving along with my mother, something happened and they were nearly going to crash, when everything turned slo-mo for my father and he was able to pull the manual brake (it was in the middle of the car for the russian Lada model, unlike my current Toyta Venza).

bad title. article doesn't answer why. discusses two failed attempts to find out how it works.

An interesting article nonetheless. The "failed" attempts at least suggest that the perceived slowdown is not simply a matter of your brain processing information faster -- that it instead stores more superfluous information than normal.

So if we intentionally trigger "bullet time", it wouldn't allow us to perform superhuman feats, but it might give us superhuman recollection of details.

I thought that was the explanation. Your brain has a normal data per unit time ratio, and in these stressful situation it ends up recording much more than normal. Since you're used to a certain data/time ratio, it feels like everything happened in slow-motion.

It also works on a larger time scale. When I was working 9-to-6, weeks passed like days. Now that I'm on my own, time passes much slower because there's so much different stuff you have to do and learn every day.

Sitting in a dentists chair makes minutes seem like hours, sitting on a couch chatting with an attractive member of the opposite sex makes hours seem like minutes.

Mortgages make months shorter and years longer.

Time is pretty weird, our perception of it changes all the time depending on the circumstances, it shouldn't be a surprise that extreme circumstances change our perception of time in an extreme way.

Like an evolutionary black box. All the details stored will help the brain make sense of the event and prevent it from occurring again.

Drat, so no shooting wings off flies like in Wanted? :)

I had suspected for a while that it was memory-based rather than your brain actually "speeding up", based on an experience when I was mugged in NYC.

I expect it's so that you have an increased chance of remembering what went wrong, presuming you survive, so that you don't do it again.

Exactly. If you live through the event, the knowledge/memory of that event would be helpful in avoiding another near-death encounter. Isn't that what memory is for--to increase our chances of survival? This is just the most extreme example.

The article is all about answering the question in the title. No, it doesn't fully answer the question, but it does address the question. And even if it did present "the answer" there will always be the caveat, "as far as we know". A misleading title would be more like "Here's why a brush with death [...]"

I want the switch that allows me to turn this on at will.

Are you sure? http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/17-04/ff_perfec...

As with so many other things in the brain, there's a reason (metaphorically speaking) why it works the way it does. Anything that's a small tweak away, like more perfect recall (which evidence like the woman in the article suggests can't be that distant from how our brain works), but has not spread through the population, probably isn't that useful. (With the caveat that our environment has been rapidly changing and what's useful and not may change. Though the woman in that article doesn't seem to be a beneficiary of the effect.)

I wonder if this ability is just a function of increased adrenaline in the system or the sudden increase of adrenaline. If it is, it would be easy to make a switch, but would probably be harmful for extended periods of time.

I have often wondered why people would attribute this and other events where one has super human strength or super perception (where time slows down) to adrenaline. This is becasue it is a hormone that is released from the adrenal gland..it would take some time to get to the parts of the body where it would make things function this way would it not..at least longer than the times we are considering would allow. So if I am right, what else could be the "switch" to switch these functions on?

First off, thank you for making me look this up, as I now learned something new :)

If I understand this correctly, the immediate fight-or-flight response is triggered by noradrenaline, which is very similar to adrenaline but released by nerve cells directly to places all over the body, increasing blood flow and pressure, alertness, etc (but not affecting muscles). Adrenaline gets released into the blood via stimulation by the sympathetic system, but its effects last longer.

So it seems noradrenaline, by the fact that it's released directly from nerve cells, basically dictates how fast a person processes immediate external stimuli, and could possibly explain "super perception"

This is fascinating. Thanks for looking it up. I too have now learned something new!

I'm not sure it would be possible to train yourself to turn this on at will, but you can train yourself to make the best of it when it happens. That's what visualization & drills are about in e.g. skydiving emergency procedures.

"... you can train yourself to make the best of it when it happens ..."

The standard (and best) answer. From experience there is another factor to take into account, randomness. Each situation is unique making how you adapt important. It's never quite like the drills. Training allows you to adjust quickly. With training the skills are there ready to be applied and adapted to the situation at hand.

I'm intrigued because my understanding of drills is that it turns the required response (e.g. in skydiving trying to get stable when things get out of control) in something instinctive that will take far less time than normal to execute. When you couple this with the slowed-down time, you do improve your reaction time, so that you can use your available time window in the best way possible.

This is such a bad idea. There must be a reason the brain doesn't work at this velocity, right? I would guess it is way resource intensive and would end up with a fried brain.

During moments of danger, the mind (which is normally active and thinking all kinds of thought of past and future) stops. Thus there is a silent alertness, a clarity of vision and other senses. For such a person, it is as though time has stopped.

This is something which is quite common in the meditative practice of remaining in the present moment. Eckhart Tolle talks about this in "The Power of Now". The Buddhists (incl Zen) talk about being in the Now, too.

No, the brain does not speed up, and no, you do not start remembering each and every detail of what you see and hear. However, the clarity of the senses is remarkable. Its like one has been looking from behind a dirty window all one's life, and now someone has washed the window.

Maybe unrelated, but I give a vote for the brain perceiving things in a hyper-active state. When I go high-speed go karting, my brain needs to work incredibly fast to keep up with every little thing going on. In between sessions, if I play games on my iPhone, it is literally like the game is being played in slow motion. Alternatively, if I wake up in the morning all drowsy and I play those same games, it's as if the games are in fast forward and I can't keep up. So it's obvious my brain is in different states of awareness in these two scenarios, so it would make sense that in a near death experience, the brain jumps into that hyperactive state and things appear slower. Just my opinion.

You will love Nicholson Baker's book "The Mezzanine", and Ian McEwan's book "The Child in Time". Both capture this phenomenon of the relativity of perceived time wonderfully.

McEwan's book will just eat at your heart. If you haven't read it I implore you to at least read the first chapter.

Of Baker's book, Wikipedia says: "On the surface it deals with a man's trip up an escalator in the mezzanine of his office building during a lunch-time sojourn from his building. In reality, it deals with all the thoughts that run through our minds in any given few moments – if we were given the time to think them through to their conclusions"

I've had this happen to me, falling roughly the distance of the article's subject.

Over the years I really thought time slowed down, but I guess I can see what he's saying. Still, I doubt we'll ever definitively know until we have some way of measuring thought.

This does bring the interesting follow up question of why we're remembering so much more? To avoid the same fate in future (seems a little late, in a Darwinian argument).

Or are we perceptually processing so much more in order to try and find a way out of imminent death (which does suggest faster brain processing and is actually the opposite of what he is suggesting).

It seems to me his interpretation of the data could be wrong, there are more than one way to read his results. We may not be processing more 'frames per second' in order to read the watch but we may be consciously assessing more items in our vision than normal in order to try find an escape route.

Instinct hasn't worked and now the brain is trying higher order conscious brain power to find an escape route from imminent death? Now that you could easily argue from a Darwinian perspective.

I'm just guessing here.

Actually, this might be a result of natural selection. The beings that can be in 'the zone' have a higher probability of surviving and so they did.

Regarding the 'frames per second', I think just because your brain just hit nitro, it doesn't mean your eyes will 'see' faster. It just increases the information gathering ability of each 'frame' you see.

Higher than those who try and avoid life/death situations though?

No plan survives contact with the enemy. No matter how much you try you can't avoid life/death situations.

Wouldn't finding that the watch was still a 'blur' lead one to conclude that brushes with death don't speed up the Human Visual System?

Si if I read a book with a gun to my head, I might actually retain more knowledge...

ach, tongue in cheek humour, no need to downvote!

Yes. But not quite for that reason. A gun next to your head will make it stressful, and stress in general improves memory (even more than other emotions, thanks to the amygdala's dual role in memory and stress responses). But maybe instead of doing that, you should put your feet in ice-water or something.

Short term stress responses improve cognitive function (including memory). Long term, chronic stress reduces it. Cortisol is a hell of a drug.

Put it simple - in a very stressful situation your brain use less deletion and distortion, or even more simple - the internal spam filtering turns off. ^_^

I could have told him that 10 years ago from years of experience in cramming just a few hours before tests and exams.

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