I woke up in the morgue

I saw a documentary about catalepsy called "I woke up in the morgue", a name so awful that defies belief but the documentary was OK.

It said cataleptics who collapse when they laugh or experience strong emotion have a defective part in their brains (which I can't remember the name of right now). In most people this part produces stimulants when we experience strong emotion.

Which made me think about:

• laughing so hard you can't stand up
• asking people if they are sitting down before giving them bad news
• other times one feels weak at the knees (she said discretely)

The brain has to actively prevent us collapsing when we experience strong emotion and the surprise is not that some people do collapse but that the rest of us do so rarely.