more on : fight or flight response

For those still skeptical about the idea that much of our brain's intelligence and cognitive ability comes from our ability to discard information.

Consider the stress "fight or flight" reflex. As our heartrate and adrenaline levels ramp up, among the filters we experience : first we lose peripheral vision (getting just tunnel vision) then our sense of hearing is impaired. We feel reduced or even no pain or discomfort. In fact our brain even stops recording memories of that situation, leading to severely impaired short term memory unless you consciously and deliberately choose to imprint what happened in your mind.

Fine motor control is impaired : but gross motor reflex is enhanced.

So the brain does have limitions on what we can focus on. The fight or flight response can be interpreted as the brain deliberately filtering out information it considers unnecessary. Shuts down some functions (recording of memory) it considers not immediately critical to survival. The benefit : enhanced attention and reflexes, total focus on the threat at hand.

I can attest to these physiological effects firsthand (but that would be another story). No sensation of pain whatsoever. Reduced awareness of sound. Tunnel vision. A host of other effects, but those are physiological not mental so they're not covered here. You could argue that these are just physiological effects that have side effects affecting the brain function : well they are interlinked, but I believe my interpretation is a reasonable one.

I would like this to mean that our brain is in fact extremely limited in what we can focus on : and the definition of focus is the act of discarding unnecessary information.

And yeah : if you are faced with a threatening situation (being mugged) etc be aware that these stress responses WILL occur, there is nothing you can do about it. But try to keep a cool head, commit every detail to memory so you will have an accurate report to give to the police (if you're still alive hehe). The best case outcome for the mugger is to steal your possessions with the minimum of fuss and zero injury (if you're injured, the police will be hunting them down twice as hard and fast for a much increased jailterm).

And don't stress ya =p