Why Your Brain is Behind
Just like any other incredible piece of computer technology, your brain needs to hit the refresh button once in a while. Taking frequent productivity breaks, making sure to keep the blood pumping with walks, (running), or meditation are all familiar ways of hitting that magical refresh button, so it might surprise you to know that your brain is refreshing itself without any conscious effort from you—about every 15 seconds!
These aren’t the same type of mental health breaks we force on ourselves for a personal refresh, however. Instead, it’s the only way the brain can actually keep up with the demands of the real world. Making sense of all the motion, colors, senses, and light is actually a full-time job for the brain, and it’s protecting itself by freezing visual information in place and not updating it for a full 15 seconds.
Brain’s Time Delay Perception
Whether you like to think of it as a delay or a refresh, the brain is basically taking snapshots of the current environment and using that snapshot rather than a constant influx of the current time. Yes, you heard correctly: what you think is happening this very minute, in the present, is actually 15 seconds behind!
Researchers were intrigued with the fact that small changes are almost imperceptible to the human brain, such as slight changes in color or the way individual frames of a movie flow together. To test their theory, they put participants in a study that focused on “change blindness.”
Face Recognition Time Delay
Participants viewed time-lapse videos depicting aging faces in 30-second segments. Only the features in the center of the face were shown to keep the faces from being too distinct individually. Post-video, participants often selected the face seen halfway through the time lapse, rather than the one recently viewed.
It’s the brain’s efficiency in filtering visual stimuli, with subtle changes crucial for optimal functioning in a dynamic world. Devoid of it, we’d be overwhelmed by sensory input, rendering us unable to cope or function, according to researchers. We often overlook familiar details until precision is crucial, like during driving, highlighting our selective perception in daily routines. Pause longer at stop signs; we often miss the complete picture, a powerful reminder to be attentive in daily life.
Further Reading
Mauro Manassi, David Whitney. Illusion of visual stability through active perceptual serial dependence. Science Advances, 2022; 8 (2) DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abk2480
