Humans time blinks so they don't miss information

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/5925932/Humans-time-blinks-so-they-dont-miss-information.html

by nreece • 17 years ago

27 16 17 years ago

telegraph.co.uk

woodsier• 17 years ago

It always amazes me how _we_ control our body for the most part, and yet so much of it remains a mystery.

unalone• 17 years ago

I know, right? Every time I read something new about the human body, I'm struck with this thought like, "Wow, I'm really awesome and I never knew it."

HeyLaughingBoy• 17 years ago

This is pretty well known already: in Kendo, students are taught to monitor our opponent and attack when he blinks. Likewise, you need to be aware of your own blink and be prepared to defend yourself when you do.

Dilpil2• 17 years ago

That doesn't really sound like great advice. Human reaction time is about 200ms (http://getyourwebsitehere.com/jswb/rttest01.html if you wish to verify this for yourself), whereas the blink duration is 100 to 150 ms. By the time you reacted the blink would be over.

joeyo• 17 years ago

You react when you think he is going to blink, then.

jdburdette• 17 years ago

If you see him blink and react, then he only has 50 ms to react to your attack, which you just stated is not enough time.

bgutierrez• 17 years ago

Dr Tamami Nakano should monitor people playing Guitar Hero, and watch how infrequently they blink their eyes.

gojomo• 17 years ago

My first thought was: well of course, this is just like timing your 'reloads' in various shooter games (where you point offscreen and fire to reload).

tomerico• 17 years ago

I wonder why evolution hasn't made it possible to blink with each eye separately, so that no information is lost.

nudded• 17 years ago

and what if something interesting happens in the line of sight only visible to the eye you just blinked with?

if you blink with both eyes, you are sure you missed something, if you only blink with one at the time, you will never know if you missed something.

(and besides only blinking with one eye at the time would look kinda silly :)

wglb• 17 years ago

Now that is really an interesting question.

I wonder if blinking with one eye would be disruptive to the sterovision that is going on. An interesting test would be to train oneself to blink one eye at a time.

mahmud• 17 years ago

I think you answered yourself: stereovision support. The mental context-switch needed to go from stereo to mono to stereo again is probably more expensive than just going from stereo to nothing and back to stereo. I just tried it and closing one eye at a time made me sorta dizy.

(disclaimer: not a trained eyetician ;-)

marze• 17 years ago

Stories like this make me think of Haldane quote:

"I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

tvon• 17 years ago

You've been blinking all your life, I'd think it obvious that on a subconscious level you would learn to time those blinks to come at the most opportune times.

clistctrl• 17 years ago

It was hard to read the article, as I concentrated so hard on my own blinking.

Humans time blinks so they don't miss information

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