| From: | Paul Gettle RunnerPaul@*****.com |
|---|---|
| Subject: | simsense and the astral [long] |
| Date: | Tue, 16 Feb 1999 22:50:43 -0500 |
At 05:20 PM 2/16/99 -0500, Marc Renouf wrote:
> Okay, note that I said "sensory centers." ASIST ignores *large*
>chunks of the brain, and in fact only deals with the senses. It
doesn't
>deal with memory or the regulation of bodily function, for instance.
Um, actually, the emotive tracks that are recorded in Full-X simsense
do deal with the regulation of bodily function.
"The major emotive tracks are sympathetic, parasympathetic, adrenal,
thalamic and hypo-thalamic, limbic and so on." -- Shadowbeat, p.75
Going down the list:
sympathetic & parasympathetic- These are the two subdivisions of the
autonomic nerve system, the nerves that automatically control the
body's internal organs. The parasympathetic nerves encourage the body
to divert it's energies to the handling of basic metabolic
housekeeping tasks, while the sympathetic nerves encourage the body to
direct it's energies to more external concerns, such as the
fight/flight response, and sexual activity.
adrenal- The adrenal glands are responsible for producing several
hormones that regulate metabolic processes such as blood sugar level,
and they also produce the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine (aka
adrenaline & noradrenaline) which are critical to the proper
stimulation and regulation of the body during times of excitement or
stress.
thalamic- The thalamus is one of the brain's main "switching centers"
coordinating and relaying sensory and motor signals to other parts of
the brain.
hypo-thalamic- The hypothalamus is the part of the brain that
coordinates many internal functions of the body, everything from body
temperature to carbohydrate metabolism to the percentage of water in
the bloodstream. It is also responsible for releasing the master
hormones that regulate other parts of the endocrine system, such as
the adrenal glands and the gonads. The hypothalamus is the site of the
body's pleasure center, where the brain experiences positive
reinforcement for basic biological needs such as eating or sex. The
hypothalamus also serves as a mediator between the cognitive brain and
the limbic system, allowing conscious thought to both override
emotions, and also to allow the brain to feel pleasure for abstract
concepts in addition to the pleasures derived from a biological basis.
limbic- The limbic system is the part of the brain ultimately
responsible for coordinating and directing the internal organ activity
that underlies all emotional responses. It directs the hypothalamus to
regulate the body into the heightened or dampened states of energy and
activity that are characteristic of the various emotions. These
changes in bodily state are conducted by the autonomic nerve system
and the various glands of the endocrine system.
- From the standpoint of the body, many emotions are simply the body's
energy/activity levels raised to different states of arousal. In the
case of highthened states of bodily activity, there is really only one
bodily response, often referred to as the fight/flight response,
though it is more properly (if more crudely put) the fight/flight/f*ck
response. The only thing that differentiates an active emotion such as
"Anger" from "Fear" or from "Lust" is the context the higher
brain
perceives while the body is in it's state of arousal.
In simsense, the context is mostly established by the sensory tracks,
though the thalamic (and possibly hypo-thalamic) emotive track may
also provide a 'context' in this case.
As for more passive emotions, such as happiness, pride, satisfaction,
and other emotions that are abstracted from the basic concept of
pleasure, these would register directly on the hypo-thalamic emotive
track.
However, getting back to the issue at hand, which was something along
the lines of "If the astrally projecting mage's meat body exhibits
some sympathetic connection with what the mage's astral form is
experiencing (as suggested by a novel), what would a simsense
recording of that contain?" it seems clear that such a recording
wouldn't be particularly useful.
When a mage projects, the meatbody goes into a coma-like trance. This
means almost nothing to record on extroceptive (EC) sensory track
(sensations originating outside the body, the classic five senses),
and only slightly more to record on the proprioceptive (PC) sensory
track (sensations from inside the body, such as the sense of motion
and position of the body's muscles, as well as the sense of the states
of various internal organs).
If the projecting mage's meatbody responds to what happens to the
astral form, then the PC sensory tracks will record this, but without
the EC track for context, anyone experiencing the sim would feel their
heart race, or their arm twitch, for example, without knowing why.
Similarly, there might be data for the emotive tracks to record, but
without a context to frame the levels of arousal on the various
emotive tracks, there is no way to tell if the astral projector is
scared witless, kicking butt in an astral combat, or having kinky
astral sex with a free spirit.
A sim of an astral projection "may have some pretty neat sensations to
it" (to borrow a phrase from Shadowbeat's section on Magic and
Simsense), but ultimately, the bodily sensations recorded on it lack
the context that would allow the audience to know what those
sensations mean.
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-- Paul Gettle, #970 of 1000 (RunnerPaul@*****.com)
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