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I had some medical problems when I was growing up that caused me to black out often enough that I became pretty familiar with the sensations of the process. Wha

I had some medical problems when I was growing up that caused me to black out often enough that I became pretty familiar with the sensations of the process. What you are describing sounds similar to what I would call a sense of euphoria I would experience when I first came back to consciousness. I never got any sort of satisfactory explanation for what exactly was going on, but it almost seems to be some sort of neurochemical boot up process related to consciousness.

yannis 17y ago
The other mystery with all this is that none of these people remember talking to anyone, it seems that the language faculty keeps suppressing some processes in the brain, it is almost as if it is an abstract layer on top of the underlying 'compilers'. Aboriginal people always talk about the 'dream world' which I theorize was a pre-language sort of memory. Try this experiment. Try to think of driving to the store buy some food, come back home cook it and have dinner. Can you do that without language just images?
- smhinsey 17y ago
  I recall that waking up happened in stages. The first stage was full on dreamworld. The majority of it was nonsense I forgot immediately, but I do have scattered memories of very intricate and bizarre almost Proustian sorts of scenes playing out in my mind involving whoever was around at the time. Like sleeping dreams the amount of elapsed time in the dream did not seem to be bounded by external time. The second phase begins as you wake up from that dream and consists of auditory & visual 'hallucinations.' I scare-quote that because it's probably not the most precise characterization. The best way I can describe the sound is as the sound of crashing waves at the ocean, but they quickly go from very loud to to sort of a dull ringing that almost seems to physically hurt your ears. (I associate this with high blood pressure for some reason, but I don't think that's valid, particularly in this case.) The visuals consist of an almost cinematic gradual fade-in from black. The third and final stage is where things become more familiar. This generally kicks in a minute or so after you regain consciousness. This is where you are aware of your surroundings but very muddled. If you're in a medical situation, people will be talking to you but it will just seem like gibberish. This fades pretty quickly back into a sort-of normalcy that you gradually adapt to. Sometimes this would be accompanied by nausea, and at this point you are still susceptible to re-starting the process if you aren't careful. I am not sure I could really do it in practice, but as a thought experiment, I don't have a huge problem with visualizing that sequence without language, but then again, I am a symbolic/visual person in terms of my learning and thought process.
  - yannis 17y ago
    You can do that? I have tried very hard and can do part of it but always some word creeps in, even if is saying thank you to the teller.
    - smhinsey 17y ago
      Well, in general I make it a point to be as polite as possible in situations like that because it is not in my nature to be very outgoing and talkative. I tend to be shy with people I don't know well. From the perspective of purely my own personality, getting by with a smile and a nod doesn't present much of a problem to me and is really the default state.
    - smhinsey 17y ago
      It's interesting, now that I have run it through a couple more times. If I think about somewhere I can walk to/from, it's much easier than having to imagine driving, for example, and if I am less familiar with an area, I tend to think more in terms of streets and directions than with areas I know well where I am navigating based on landmarks.

yannis 17y ago

The other mystery with all this is that none of these people remember talking to anyone, it seems that the language faculty keeps suppressing some processes in the brain, it is almost as if it is an abstract layer on top of the underlying 'compilers'. Aboriginal people always talk about the 'dream world' which I theorize was a pre-language sort of memory. Try this experiment. Try to think of driving to the store buy some food, come back home cook it and have dinner. Can you do that without language just images?

smhinsey 17y ago
I recall that waking up happened in stages. The first stage was full on dreamworld. The majority of it was nonsense I forgot immediately, but I do have scattered memories of very intricate and bizarre almost Proustian sorts of scenes playing out in my mind involving whoever was around at the time. Like sleeping dreams the amount of elapsed time in the dream did not seem to be bounded by external time. The second phase begins as you wake up from that dream and consists of auditory & visual 'hallucinations.' I scare-quote that because it's probably not the most precise characterization. The best way I can describe the sound is as the sound of crashing waves at the ocean, but they quickly go from very loud to to sort of a dull ringing that almost seems to physically hurt your ears. (I associate this with high blood pressure for some reason, but I don't think that's valid, particularly in this case.) The visuals consist of an almost cinematic gradual fade-in from black. The third and final stage is where things become more familiar. This generally kicks in a minute or so after you regain consciousness. This is where you are aware of your surroundings but very muddled. If you're in a medical situation, people will be talking to you but it will just seem like gibberish. This fades pretty quickly back into a sort-of normalcy that you gradually adapt to. Sometimes this would be accompanied by nausea, and at this point you are still susceptible to re-starting the process if you aren't careful. I am not sure I could really do it in practice, but as a thought experiment, I don't have a huge problem with visualizing that sequence without language, but then again, I am a symbolic/visual person in terms of my learning and thought process.
- yannis 17y ago
  You can do that? I have tried very hard and can do part of it but always some word creeps in, even if is saying thank you to the teller.
  - smhinsey 17y ago
    Well, in general I make it a point to be as polite as possible in situations like that because it is not in my nature to be very outgoing and talkative. I tend to be shy with people I don't know well. From the perspective of purely my own personality, getting by with a smile and a nod doesn't present much of a problem to me and is really the default state.
  - smhinsey 17y ago
    It's interesting, now that I have run it through a couple more times. If I think about somewhere I can walk to/from, it's much easier than having to imagine driving, for example, and if I am less familiar with an area, I tend to think more in terms of streets and directions than with areas I know well where I am navigating based on landmarks.