Humans are 'blind' for about two hours a day: How does the brain shape reality?
Although humans usually accept the world they see with their eyes, in fact, the human eye is 'effectively blind for about two hours per day.' Kurzgesagt, a science-based YouTube channel, explains why such a state is caused and why humans are able to recognize the world as if it were
Why Your Brain Blinds You For 2 Hours Every Day - YouTube
The world that humans normally see is not 'reality' itself.
In fact, humans do not live in the 'now and now' moment, but are merely aware of the reality and memories that the brain creates by editing various information.
Vision is our primary source of information about the world, but we can only see a small area at high resolution.
However, the reason why it feels like most of your field of vision is clear is because your eyes are making rapid movements called '
This allows us to scan our surroundings and obtain clear images, which our brain then edits to give us a smoother perception of the world.
During a microsaccade, your field of vision would normally blur violently, but the brain suppresses vision during that time, making the movement invisible.
If you add up the time that people are effectively blinded by microsaccades, Kurzgesagt pointed out, that amounts to roughly two hours of blindness per day.
Your brain fills in the gaps by 'guessing' what happened while your vision wasn't working. In reality, a lot of things are happening while you can't see, but you don't perceive them.
First of all, the speed at which information enters the brain differs for each sense. For example, when you stir a cup of coffee with a spoon, it takes only 1.3 nanoseconds for the light reflected from the spoon to reach your eyes, but it takes about 1.2 milliseconds for the sound of the coffee cup hitting the spoon to reach your ears. In addition, the heat you feel when your fingertips touch the coffee cup takes 50 milliseconds to travel from your fingertips to your brain. All of these different senses are processed at different times in the brain.
But rather than separate these experiences, people perceive them as one unified experience all happening at the same time because the brain processes these sensations to create the 'unreal present moment.'
Kurzgesagt explains that what we perceive as the 'present' is actually a selectively edited version of the past, and that we only actually perceive the world 0.3 to 0.5 seconds after something happens.
Furthermore, the brain even makes 'future decisions' beyond conscious control.
For example, in a professional table tennis match, a ping pong ball flies around a small table at a speed of up to 25 meters per second.
At this speed, when the visual information enters your brain and you try to move, it simply cannot keep up with the speed of the ping-pong ball.
Therefore, the brain of a table tennis player predicts the 'future position of the ping pong ball' based on the opponent's position and movement, the direction of the racket, etc.
Your brain prepares your muscles to move even before the ping pong ball hits the racket, directing movement based on the most likely prediction.
During this time, the player may think, 'I looked at the position of the ping pong ball and tried to hit it back,' but in reality, the brain is making the decision to hit the ping pong ball back before he or she even has to think about it.
This happens not only in intense sports like table tennis, but also in everyday walking. The brain is constantly processing 'past' sensory feedback and making predictions about 'present' and 'future' states.
Before you even feel the sensation of the step you just took, your brain sends a command to your muscles to take the next step, and it also calculates the pattern for that next step.
In such a situation, what happens if an unexpected event occurs, such as stepping on a banana peel and slipping?
So far, Kurzgesagt has explained it as if the 'brain' makes all decisions, but in fact it is not just the brain that controls the body; various organs recognize various information at their own time.
For example, when your foot steps on a banana peel and you lose balance,
This information is sent to the brain stem and spinal cord, which function if immediate action is required.
These organs instantly trigger emergency response patterns and send commands to various muscles.
Within 200 milliseconds, pre-programmed actions such as extending the arms to balance, stiffening the other foot to support the body weight, and contracting the core to stabilize the body are triggered, allowing the body to recover from the slip.
By the time you realize you've 'slipped on a banana peel,' you've already landed successfully or fallen.
The brain not only predicts what is happening around us, but also what is happening inside us.
States such as hunger, fatigue, and sleepiness are not objective responses, but rather predictions made by the brain based on past experiences. The brain secretes hormones when a certain time approaches, inciting humans to take action.
The same is true for social events: if you attend a party, your brain analyses previous experiences to predict what the party will be like before you actually experience what it's like.
If you anticipate an anxious or uncomfortable party, your heart rate will increase, stress hormones will be released, and your muscles will tense up before you even enter the room.
When you think about how the brain edits the entire world, creates reality, predicts what will happen in the future, and tells you to act before you think, you might feel as if you have no will and are just living your life according to your brain.
However, human will and self do not only determine our reactions in the moment. When it comes to long-term plans and goals, such as 'traveling to a place that interests me' or 'getting a qualification to prepare for a new job,' our own will becomes important.
Our brains and organs make semi-automatic decisions, like a butler taking care of our daily chores, while our conscious self is good at long-term planning and abstract thinking.
The human mind can grasp the big picture and predict the distant future in ways that the unconscious brain can never do.
'In the end, only you can tell the story of who you are in this world,' Kurzgesagt said.
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