4 thoughts on “the brain’s gone crunchy… or so i have read…”
Why is it that that stuff always gives me the heebiejeebies? (How does one spell heebiejeebies, exactly?)
It’s one of my favorite things to read about, but here I am, working at home, alone in my room, and I got partway through the “Capgras’ Syndrome” thing and started getting creeped out, then I read the first line of the “Cotards’ Syndrome,” (“characterized by the patient believing that he is dead…”) and I had to stop reading.
Well, I didn’t HAVE to stop reading, but I really have that hair-on-the-back-of-my-neck-standing-up thing going on, and I need to be focusing on work. But I’ve always wondered why I have such a strong reaction to this sort of thing. Seems like at this point nothing scares me more than thoughts of brain problems; It’s not like i’m afraid of having them myself, it’s the thought that they exist as problems. Or something.
p’raps it’s something to do with thinking of the brain as such a fragile mechanism, thinking about the heartbeating can be a strange experience (or even more so, watching ones own heart on a tv!) such that thinking about the braingears and their whirling sets about a reverb effect which is … unsettling…
I can see that as one way I’d be scared of such things, but having pondered it some more I think it’s different than that. I think the fear centers on thinking about encountering someone with this sort of problem. And I think maybe the reason that scares me has to do with some things I experienced as a kid.
For one thing, I started remembering times growing up when my younger brother, who shared a room with me, would say weird things in his sleep. Occasionally he’d do things (get up, walk around, start conversations) that had me thinking he was awake, but when I’d try to talk to him, he’d not recognize that I was there. That could be VERY creepy in the middle of the night, having my brother seem to be someone he wasn’t, or having him seem to not recognize me, or not recognize that I was even there.
What that sort of experience does, in part, is to make me question my own interpretation of events. “Is he sleepwalking, or am I dreaming? Am I even here?”
Also, I’m prone to the same sort of sleeping weirdness. I come half awake sometimes and have all sorts of strangeness running through my head, sort of dream-logics that I impose onto the real world, which I’m only half perceiving. Sometimes I’ll wake up fiddling with something on my dresser, trying to “turn off” some picture frame, or to find some object that in my increasingly awake state I can’t remember what (it) is.
Those experiences are somewhat frightening, and the thought of encountering a person behaving in a similar manner while “awake” is therefore creepy to me.
One time that thinking about that sort of thing REALLY got me creeped out was when I worked the graveyard shift at a 7-11. Before heading to work I had watched a show in Alien Hand Syndrome, and then while at work I just kept thinking about tricks or perception, and then I thought about how some person could come in there who was so utterly weird looking, deformed or something, and I might not see that person because my mind might ignore what I saw as it was so out of place.
(I understand that that last little bit went completely outta whack, sort of like i were talking in dream logic right there out in the waking typing world. So anyway, part of what scares me about all that IS thinking about how my brain might trick me in such a way.)
I just love neurology. Did you ever read “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” by Oliver Sacks? It’s fascinating. i’s problem is that he has such a creative mind that he’s compelled to try to imagine such a state. Lotsa creative people do that. I used to work at an animation studio and one day we all opened up and started talking about the darker side of having a good imagination. On one hand, you can come up with some delightful ideas, but on the other hand you can scare the heck outta yourself just riding on an escalator and imagining what would happen if you fell, for example. It’s weird. That’s why it’s handy for creative people to have well-grounded, sensible, realistic spouses and friends whom they can trust to slap ’em back to cold, hard, blessed reality sometimes.
Why is it that that stuff always gives me the heebiejeebies? (How does one spell heebiejeebies, exactly?)
It’s one of my favorite things to read about, but here I am, working at home, alone in my room, and I got partway through the “Capgras’ Syndrome” thing and started getting creeped out, then I read the first line of the “Cotards’ Syndrome,” (“characterized by the patient believing that he is dead…”) and I had to stop reading.
Well, I didn’t HAVE to stop reading, but I really have that hair-on-the-back-of-my-neck-standing-up thing going on, and I need to be focusing on work. But I’ve always wondered why I have such a strong reaction to this sort of thing. Seems like at this point nothing scares me more than thoughts of brain problems; It’s not like i’m afraid of having them myself, it’s the thought that they exist as problems. Or something.
Good link though. I will continue later probably.
p’raps it’s something to do with thinking of the brain as such a fragile mechanism, thinking about the heartbeating can be a strange experience (or even more so, watching ones own heart on a tv!) such that thinking about the braingears and their whirling sets about a reverb effect which is … unsettling…
I can see that as one way I’d be scared of such things, but having pondered it some more I think it’s different than that. I think the fear centers on thinking about encountering someone with this sort of problem. And I think maybe the reason that scares me has to do with some things I experienced as a kid.
For one thing, I started remembering times growing up when my younger brother, who shared a room with me, would say weird things in his sleep. Occasionally he’d do things (get up, walk around, start conversations) that had me thinking he was awake, but when I’d try to talk to him, he’d not recognize that I was there. That could be VERY creepy in the middle of the night, having my brother seem to be someone he wasn’t, or having him seem to not recognize me, or not recognize that I was even there.
What that sort of experience does, in part, is to make me question my own interpretation of events. “Is he sleepwalking, or am I dreaming? Am I even here?”
Also, I’m prone to the same sort of sleeping weirdness. I come half awake sometimes and have all sorts of strangeness running through my head, sort of dream-logics that I impose onto the real world, which I’m only half perceiving. Sometimes I’ll wake up fiddling with something on my dresser, trying to “turn off” some picture frame, or to find some object that in my increasingly awake state I can’t remember what (it) is.
Those experiences are somewhat frightening, and the thought of encountering a person behaving in a similar manner while “awake” is therefore creepy to me.
One time that thinking about that sort of thing REALLY got me creeped out was when I worked the graveyard shift at a 7-11. Before heading to work I had watched a show in Alien Hand Syndrome, and then while at work I just kept thinking about tricks or perception, and then I thought about how some person could come in there who was so utterly weird looking, deformed or something, and I might not see that person because my mind might ignore what I saw as it was so out of place.
(I understand that that last little bit went completely outta whack, sort of like i were talking in dream logic right there out in the waking typing world. So anyway, part of what scares me about all that IS thinking about how my brain might trick me in such a way.)
Okay!
I just love neurology. Did you ever read “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” by Oliver Sacks? It’s fascinating. i’s problem is that he has such a creative mind that he’s compelled to try to imagine such a state. Lotsa creative people do that. I used to work at an animation studio and one day we all opened up and started talking about the darker side of having a good imagination. On one hand, you can come up with some delightful ideas, but on the other hand you can scare the heck outta yourself just riding on an escalator and imagining what would happen if you fell, for example. It’s weird. That’s why it’s handy for creative people to have well-grounded, sensible, realistic spouses and friends whom they can trust to slap ’em back to cold, hard, blessed reality sometimes.