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Post by Ashen on Jun 16, 2013 23:00:42 GMT -6
I've added a section on the phantom body under The Mind of a Were. It's necessarily short because we do not know that much about it. Funny - it's one of the most striking things about being Were and we know so little about it. Next I work on empathy and language. I eagerly look forward to the next part!
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Post by wolfvanzandt on Jul 20, 2013 11:37:36 GMT -6
The section on empathy and language is up. I've also added some bibliographic references and the section about Bennin cuisine (ooh! That rhymes!), under The International Wok B.
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Post by wolfvanzandt on Sept 2, 2013 1:05:28 GMT -6
I have placed the first installment on Were neurophysiology in the Mind of the Were section of the Therian timeline. It will be awhile before I publish more. I have to get an article and I'll have to wait until I can afford it. I do have a table of the results of the McLean Hospital study and a few earlier ones up.
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Post by wolfvanzandt on Mar 20, 2014 22:44:20 GMT -6
I've finished the section on neurophysiology and have started on a section on senses and perception. This is where I lose research, since there isn't that much more on Were psychology. I'm tracking the research as it comes out and I'll be incorporating it into my pages but now I start talking mainly about what the community has noticed about the Were community, so if you have noticed anything related to the senses, let me know. Here are some of the things that I've seen on forums in the past:
Weres' senses are sharper and more sensitive. The usual interpretation is that Weres use their senses more. Weres are more sensitive to motion and have problems with stationary objects. Many Weres have problems with facial agnosia (difficulty seeing faces as a whole and, therefore, with recognizing people by appearance. With me, that also applies to cars.) Weres tend to rely more on touch and smell than Mainstreamers. Weres with hearing problems usually have problems hearing spoken information in noisy environments. A lot of Weres have color vision problems. Often, shifting will cause a lack of color vision or will change their color vision in some way (seeing red or seeing in sepia tones). A lot of Weres report experiencing synesthesia. Filtering of auditory information is difficult so that noise doesn't get filtered out and is very distracting. Weres don't seem to filter any of their senses nearly as much as Mainstreamers. That may be the root cause of the difficulty with conversation in noisy environments.
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Post by lenowill on Mar 20, 2014 23:08:35 GMT -6
In response to Wolf's post, I'll just throw in my personal attestation:
-My eyesight is terrible (in the sense that I'm extremely nearsighted) but I'm very sensitive to brightness, and I have rather good hearing when it is focused and undistracted. My sense of smell and taste are both hilariously bad (my housemates complain they could feed me any quality of food and I'd hardly notice the differences in scent/flavor - but then, I grew up spending much of my time in a damp and somewhat moldy house, and one of my strongest shamanic/animalistic influences is Dolphin. To the best of my knowledge, dolphins do not seem to have olfaction - smell - at all. xD)
-I don't know what my status is regarding moving/stationary objects, but I do do a thing where I chronically interpret things out of the corner of my eye as being the shape of an animal or a person.
-I don't seem to have an obvious problem with facial agnosia, but recognizing/reading faces is not a forte of mine either.
-I intuitively rely on touch quite a lot, even to the point of routinely using the trick of wetting my hand before touching a questionably hot object (so that the water soaks the brunt of the heat and I don't burn myself) just so I can confirm its temperature by touch.
-I have problems hearing spoken information in noisy environments. (It makes me look even more floaty and oblivious than I already do. xD)
-My color vision doesn't seem to change.
-I seem to have the synesthesia, and it's a particularly strange kind - when I hear certain frequencies of sound they bleed over into my sense of touch, creating a weird effect where I'll "feel" a progression of sound-related feelings along my back. The temperature of the feeling seems to vary with tone but I haven't experimented enough to say more than that - I just know I feel "warm" sounds and "cold" sounds - one thing that does sound out is that the "cold" ones tend to be more shrill though (e.g. a flute playing a wistful, sorrowful, airy melody). My experience of this seems to be related to the apparently phenomenon of feeling a tingle on your spine in response to music, but it also has some pretty distinct differences to the best of my ability to discern - I've always been this way so I don't know if what I'm experiencing is _actually_ that different from what most people refer to when they say "spine-tingling music" or not. For me it is very much not a metaphor. I can filter out the sensations with effort (I learned to do this because the sound of a barber's vibrating razor would give me sensory fits, making me feel as though my neck and spine were being literally tickled, which would send me into fits of flinching and/or laughter long before the razor actually touched my skin and would generally make me look a bit silly to everyone observing) but I don't really like to, since letting myself feel them with a good song is really enjoyable. The less attention I pay to the sound of the music the less I feel/notice it, also. The more attention I pay the deeper I sink into the feeling.
-I'm terribad at filtering auditory information and can easily suffer sensory overload from loud noise. One of the meanest things (to my mind) anyone ever did to me when I was at university involved driving their car by me while I was on a sidewalk at a curve in the road (with their car's hood facing directly at me) and blowing their horn loud and long all of a sudden. The closeness of the horn and the direction it was pointing meant I heard (what I can only guess was) the full brunt of the sound. It instantly sent me into an ugly shift and made me want to tear the car apart and do bad things to its driver. >:[
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Post by wolfvanzandt on Mar 21, 2014 13:24:24 GMT -6
Oh, yes. Peripheral halluciantions are another thing. I touched on that some in the psychoneurological section.
The tactile sensitivity is another thing. That seems to be a place where non-autistic Weres resemble autistic ones. When a facility has a problem with autistic people taking off their clothes in a shopping mall, it isn't that the autistic people are exhibitionistic - they're just so tactilly sensitive that their clothes drive them nuts. I can certainly identify. That is the sum totality of my nudism.
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Post by bartholomew on Mar 22, 2014 20:04:36 GMT -6
Weres' senses are sharper and more sensitive. The usual interpretation is that Weres use their senses more.
Some senses yes, some no. I can smell salt in food, very subtle differences in coffee, and such things. But I need to be close to the source. I also do not have mainstream reactions to many scents. A smell is a smell is a smell. Hearing can be poor, for physical reasons, day sight is poor and getting worse, nightsight excellent. taste is high, but the scent thing applies. I can eat poor food, I just don't like it as much. Too many additives/processing make me sick, but I can eat it. Touch is very good, and I use it a lot.
Weres are more sensitive to motion and have problems with stationary objects.
more sensitive, yes, but no prob with stationary. But then, I'm not a classical 'predator' theriotype.
Many Weres have problems with facial agnosia (difficulty seeing faces as a whole and, therefore, with recognizing people by appearance. With me, that also applies to cars.)
Faces no prob, cars, I'm hopeless. It's probably a cultural thing.
Weres tend to rely more on touch and smell than Mainstreamers.
yes.
Weres with hearing problems usually have problems hearing spoken information in noisy environments.
yes.
A lot of Weres have color vision problems. Often, shifting will cause a lack of color vision or will change their color vision in some way (seeing red or seeing in sepia tones).
no problem.
A lot of Weres report experiencing synesthesia.
None.
Filtering of auditory information is difficult so that noise doesn't get filtered out and is very distracting. Weres don't seem to filter any of their senses nearly as much as Mainstreamers. That may be the root cause of the difficulty with conversation in noisy environments.
I think you're right. Might also cause distractibility issues.
Barth
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Post by wolfvanzandt on Mar 23, 2014 10:53:23 GMT -6
Good points - especially where it comes to theriotype determining Weres' strengths and weaknesses. Actually, the only two explanations I've seen on Were boards for strong senses is that Weres use their senses more, which, in itself, will strengthen the senses; and that Weres just physiologically have better senses. That might be cleared up by having a bunch of Weres go through a sensory screening. Maybe once i get established here in Colorado, I can run these Weres through a protocol and compare them to the anthropological data. That might clear it up - or it might just generate a whole new set of questions.
But.......
What I'm looking for here isn't verification of what I've seen on the boards and in the offline community - that'll have to come from research. I'm wondering if you folks have noticed anything else that I've missed.
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Post by bartholomew on Mar 23, 2014 17:35:56 GMT -6
were's also seem to often be weirdness magnets, and other things, that might indicate a higher level of paranormal activity/awareness. Is it possible that part of this higher sensitivity is, for the lack of a better word right now, 'psychic' in nature?
Barth
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Post by wolfvanzandt on Mar 24, 2014 0:08:49 GMT -6
My impression is that vampiric entities like the energy Weres generate. That may thin the veil - I don't know. I'm not sure how I'm going to approach that - it's definitely something that's been noticed by a lot of people - Weres and others associated with the Were community. I'm not sure what section to put that under but I don't think it's a sensory phenomenon. It may also have something to do with the chaotic nature of Weres and it may even have something to do with the reason we're here. We get exposed to weirdness because we're supposed to be taking care of it. That almost seems to go under Religion and Weres. I'm not so sure I want to put it there, though.
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Post by lenowill on Mar 24, 2014 4:11:13 GMT -6
I suspect Weres _themselves_ tend thin the veil around them - or at the very least that the "energetically active" ones do. Since generally speaking we're standing on both sides of the veil at all times (in some respect or other) we're bound to make some ripples in the cloth - along with just plain being a linking point from one side of the veil to the other. We can probably also close the veil tighter through our actions and interactions, but I won't yet hypothesize how that works (and I'm also not sure it's healthy unless used in very skillful moderation/balance).
But yes, we seem to be in the nature of open and shutting things - though, that's coming from someone whose primary shamanic calling seems to be psychopompic (i.e., my work has me opening and shutting things a lot, and assisting people or entities on journeys through the paths and passages thus created, so I'm definitely biased toward seeing it that way).
My experience has generally been that gathering a bunch of Weres together for a prolonged period of time, in a social environment in which they're emotionally open (not hiding in their shells) tends to thin the veil to humorously large degrees. (I suppose that in any werehouse there's the physical interaction - and then there's the phantom interaction. And they're really quite an interesting story when you look at them both together. xD)
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Post by bartholomew on Mar 24, 2014 7:46:36 GMT -6
I think, shamanism/chaos/etc would be the best place for it.
Barth.
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Post by wolfvanzandt on Mar 24, 2014 10:00:41 GMT -6
I've actually mentioned it in the shamainsim section, but there's not much substantive research I can give on that - no wonder, huh?
As for our Werehouse attracting weirdness, there's a little - but very little. We have two shamans and a magic worker warding this place. I don't see how anything could get out or in without our permission. Outside our home - pandemonium. Y'know. I always heard that a building had to be at least 50 years old to be haunted - I guess Denver never passed that law.
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Post by bartholomew on Mar 24, 2014 11:56:10 GMT -6
Well, if it's the house on Hickory, there's enough energy that you're lighting up the night sky like a nightclub. So no surprise.
Barth
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Post by wolfvanzandt on Mar 24, 2014 17:31:55 GMT -6
Ooh. That sounds like a movie - The House on Hickory. Actually it should be.......
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