![]() ![]() The story then informs our self-concept, and answers the nagging philosophical question of “Who am I?”. We reinforce this story by seeking out information that corroborates it, and filtering out anything that doesn’t. They reinforce our identities. To create a sense of who we are, we often frame our memories and current experiences as a story.But why? Philosophers, evolutionary biologists, and psychologists point to a few reasons. As everything inside us is crumbling, narratives provide the scaffolding for, hopefully, a rebuilding. ![]() In other words, the power of narratives in our lives is so great that they are literally the last thing we hold onto as we move through the different neurological states that precede death. To make sense of it all, our brains form narratives that seemingly explain the turmoil going on inside our bodies. Whinnery has a theory: The power of narratives in shaping our conscious, subconscious, and unconscious states.ĭuring G-LOC episodes, or near-death experiences, our brains move back and forth between these different states. What explains the correlation between G-LOC and near-death experiences? Dr. He studied more than 700 episodes of G-LOC, and he found striking similarities between the accounts of pilots that experienced G-LOC and another phenomenon that is familiar to most - the “near-death experiences” reported by patients on operating tables, heart attack victims, and other survivors of extreme events. James Whinnery, a medical doctor and chemistry professor at West Texas A&M, began researching USAF pilots subjected to G-LOC in the early 1990s. Upon awakening, pilots report vivid hallucinations, recollections of memories long forgotten, and “out of body” moments.ĭr. The USAF uses the centrifuge to create massive g-forces and teach pilots techniques to keep blood flowing to their brains in the face of gravity’s extreme pull.Īt a certain point during training sessions, pilots will black out and lose consciousness, a physiological response known as gravity-induced loss of consciousness, or “G-LOC”. The centrifuge is a cockpit connected to a giant metal shaft, anchored in the center to a powerful motor - basically, a ball tied to the end of a string. For many years, the US Air Force has trained pilots using a giant contraption called the Holloman centrifuge.
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