Timewarp

extrait de "Timewarp: how your brain crates the fourth dimension", chez New Scientist.

"Take the peculiar case of an individual known as BW. As BW drove his car one day, the trees and buildings by the road began to speed by, as if he were driving at 300 kilometres per hour. BW eased up on the accelerator, but the cityscape continued to whizz by. Unable to cope with the speed of the world around him, BW stopped his car by the roadside.

While BW perceived the world as having accelerated, in reality what had happened was that BW had slowed down. He walked and talked in slow motion: when his doctor asked him to count 60 seconds in his head, he took 280 seconds to do it. It turned out that he had a tumour in his brain's frontal cortex.

The case is not unique. Other people with damage in that area have reported similar symptoms. Though such drastically altered perception can clearly be debilitating, it might occasionally be advantageous to change the brain's internal clock. "Accelerating" the brain - the opposite of BW's experience - might help a footballer, say, or a soldier to view the world in slow motion when things get tight. The difficulty, however, is in finding a safe way to induce the phenomenon on demand."