The brain shows us the world 15 seconds ago so that we don’t go crazy.

The human brain is designed to process information, in fact it is frankly weak and very “lazy— – prone not to work, but to procrastination. Studying his work, American and British researchers came to the conclusion that evolution has given us a protective mechanism that allows us to perceive huge amounts of data about what is happening around us, but at the same time not to go crazy from overexertion. The secret is that the brain constantly sends us into the past – shows us what happened 15 seconds ago.

Every second, billions of photons get into our eyes, which carry information about the size, shape, distance and color of objects around us. The slightest shaking of the head when walking immediately changes the picture, complicates it, but the world around is also constantly moving. As a result, the brain constantly receives an exorbitant amount of data only about what we see, not to mention the rest of the senses. And he is physically, due to biological limitations, unable to process all this information.

Therefore, the brain does not try to do this – as scientists have found, instead it summarizes the data and gives some average estimate for a period of about 15 seconds. This was confirmed experimentally when people observed continuous changes in the image and reported them – all subjects recorded a lag of 15 seconds. It turns out that in fact we do not see what is happening right now, but what happened in our immediate past. This effect explains why people do not notice important little things, they can pass by and not see the object lying in plain sight – it was static and the brain ignored it. Hence the belated reaction to instantaneous events — many classic tricks are built on distraction. On the other hand, in martial arts, sports and a number of extreme activities, the ability to act on reflexes and intuition is specially developed, when a person does not wait for the brain to process incoming information, but acts ahead of the curve.