Why Your Brain Blinds You For 2 Hours Every Day

Summary

Highlights

• Every day, our brains create a continuous narrative by stitching together past memories with predicted future events, which radically changes how we perceive reality. 🌍
• Your dazzling vision? Well, 90% of it is brain-generated as you rely mainly on a thumb-sized clear image from your visual field. 📸
• Saccadic movements cause brief blindness, so your brain weaves these moments with best guesses. 🧠💫
• A real-life table tennis game shows how anticipation supersedes reality with calculated guesses. 🏓
• Walking home doesn't involve conscious commands - the brain anticipates your next move before the current one ends! 🚶‍♂️🧭
• Slip on a banana peel? Not to worry! The brain's preprogrammed reactions spring into action to rescue! 🍌🦾
• Emotions are crafted anticipations rather than direct responses; sure makes you think when feeling anxious! 😬
• Consciousness is all about the grand narrative - you're the scriptwriter directing life's epic saga! 🎬

Key Takeaways

• Our perception is a crafted reality by the brain to maintain seamless experiences 🤯.
• You are blind for 2 hours a day due to saccadic movements! 🚶‍♂️👁️
• Present moments are edited versions of the past; you live slightly in the future! ⏳
• When playing sports, your brain predicts lost milliseconds in real-time 🤾‍♂️.
• Walking requires the brain to operate in three time zones: past, present, and future. 🚶‍♀️🧠
• Emotions and bodily states are often predictions, not just reactions. 😮
• Your conscious self isn't a driver but a storyteller and long-term planner of your life narrative. 📖

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: The Gap Between Reality and You The chapter titled 'The Gap Between Reality and You' delves into the construct of reality as experienced by individuals. It presents the argument that the world perceived by humans is not truly real, but a construct of the brain. This construct is constantly edited and manipulated by the brain, which operates in various time spheres and crafts a seemingly coherent narrative of the world. The chapter poses important questions about control and perception in one's life, and challenges the reader to reconsider the reliability of vision as the primary source of information about the world.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Visual Perception and Saccades Our visual perception is more limited than it seems. We focus on a thumbnail sized area in high resolution, while the rest is blurry. This inconspicuousness is patched up by the brain through a mechanism called saccades. These are rapid movements of the eyes, occurring 3 to 4 times per second, allowing the eyes to quickly jump from one focus point to another. This process provides the brain with various sharp images, which it edits together to create a cohesive visual experience.
• 01:00 - 01:30: Vision Shutdown During Saccades The chapter discusses how during rapid eye movements called saccades, the brain temporarily shuts down vision to prevent motion blur, making us effectively blind for about 2 hours every day. Instead of showing this blur, the brain fills in the gaps with its best guesses. The chapter further explores the concept that our perception of time may not be accurate, using the example of stirring milk into coffee.
• 01:30 - 02:00: Experiencing Time - A Fictional Reality This chapter explores the concept of experiencing time through a narrative explaining how different sensory inputs interact with our brain. When a spoon hits a ceramic surface, light reflects and reaches the eyes in nanoseconds, sound waves travel to the ear in milliseconds, and temperature changes are felt by the fingers in a slightly longer time frame. Despite the varying times these sensory signals take, the brain processes them as a synchronous experience, highlighting the complexity of human perception.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Predictive Processing - Table Tennis This chapter delves into the intricacies of predictive processing within the human brain, using the context of 'Predictive Processing - Table Tennis'. It discusses how our perception of the present is actually a constructed reality based on past events. The text explains that we consciously perceive the world with a delay of 0.3 to 0.5 seconds, as our brain selectively edits and interprets time and space. The chapter highlights that much of this processing happens beyond our conscious control, suggesting that our sense of the present is actually a sophisticated reconstruction of past events, implying that we are essentially living in the past.
• 03:00 - 04:00: Walking - A Time Travel The chapter explores the concept of time and perception by imagining scenarios where one is a professional table tennis player. It highlights how, even in fast-paced situations, there is a delay in processing information due to the time it takes for light to reach the eye and for the brain to process that information. This delay creates a kind of 'future' that we are constantly experiencing as the present.
• 04:00 - 05:00: Autonomous Body Reactions The chapter discusses how the human brain processes sensory information with inherent delays, specifically focusing on the phenomenon of perceiving the location of a moving object, like a ball. It explains that instead of presenting past information, which would result in a lagged response, the brain predicts the future position of the object to create an 'immediate' reaction scenario. This proactive prediction helps individuals react in real time, despite the inherent sensory delay, especially when needing to interact with moving objects.
• 05:00 - 06:00: Predictions Dictate Emotions In 'Predictions Dictate Emotions,' the chapter delves into how the brain anticipates movements in fast-paced situations. Using table tennis as an example, it explains that our brain predicts the ball's trajectory based on opponents' posture and accumulated experience. Unable to be certain of the outcome, the brain prepares multiple response scenarios, prompting preprogrammed muscle orders to anticipate and react accordingly, such as jumping left, right, or up. This mechanism underscores the brain's role in managing predictions and readiness in dynamic environments.
• 06:00 - 07:00: Brain Predictions Influence Emotions This chapter explores how the human brain predicts and prepares for future events, impacting emotions and reactions. It explains that multiple potential realities or 'ghost versions' of oneself are considered by the brain in anticipation of events. When an event, such as an opponent's swing, is imminent, the brain selects the most likely future, discarding other possibilities. The brain issues a command to muscles to execute the chosen action, often before the event is consciously perceived, illustrating the influence of these predictions on emotions and behavior.
• 07:00 - 08:00: Conscious Self - A Storyteller The chapter titled 'Conscious Self - A Storyteller' discusses the concept of conscious experience and decision-making. It explains how, in activities like playing table tennis or even walking, the conscious mind is not actually in control at the moment of action. Instead, the brain makes decisions and executes actions before the conscious mind becomes aware of them. The 'conscious experience' is thus described as a predictive construct that attempts to make sense of the brain's prior actions based on information processed slightly earlier. This signifies a form of 'time travel,' as our conscious perception lags just behind the brain's real-time processing.
• 08:00 - 09:00: Conscious Self - Planner and Storyteller The chapter discusses how the human brain operates in three temporal spheres simultaneously, processing past sensory feedback, assessing the current state of the body, and predicting future actions. This complex processing allows for physical tasks like walking, where the brain anticipates movements in advance, sending signals to body parts even before previous actions are completed. A hypothetical scenario is presented where unpredictability, such as slipping on a banana peel, tests this predictive ability.

Why Your Brain Blinds You For 2 Hours Every Day Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 The world you see is not real – you're not living in this very moment that you  are experiencing and nothing is like it seems. It turns out your brain constructs  your reality as you are experiencing it, it edits your memories as they happen,   it lives in totally different time spheres  and tells you a story about the world that feels real. What's going on and who  is really in control of your life? The Gap Between Reality and You Vision is maybe our main source of information about the world –
• 00:30 - 01:00 but in reality we don’t really see that much. Only a thumbnail sized area of your visual field is in high resolution, while the rest is out of focus.  If it doesn’t feel like this, that’s because it is made up by your brain – using a pretty neat trick. Each second your eyes make 3 to 4 sudden  jerky movements, saccades, of 50 milliseconds, focusing from one point to another. Scanning your environment to get different sharp images that your brain then edits together.
• 01:00 - 01:30 During a saccade your brain shuts down your vision so you don’t see a wild motion blur. This means that each day, for around 2 hours, you're completely blind. If you could actually see what your eyes  see, it would look something like this: brrrr brrrrrrrrr Instead your brain fills this time with its best  guesses of what happened during the blackness.   But it does way more – it turns out that you're not really experiencing time correctly. What's really happening when you are stirring milk into a cup of coffee?
• 01:30 - 02:00 As the spoon hits the ceramic, light reflects off it and hits your eyes after 1.3 nanoseconds. The ceramic vibrates and creates a shockwave of air molecules that travels to your ear in 1.2 milliseconds. Heat is picked up by fibres in your fingers that send a signal to your brain in 50 milliseconds. Three very different inputs, all processed in your brain at different times. You don’t experience them separately but as one smooth, simultaneous and connected moment.
• 02:00 - 02:30 Your brain takes a moment to process and then invents a reality, a present moment that's not real. What you feel is “now” is in fact a selectively edited version of the past. You really only consciously experience the  world 0.3 to 0.5 seconds after things happened. Except this is also not really true. Because your brain is editing time and space way more than that. And it makes decisions  completely out of your conscious control. You Are Living in the Past!
• 02:30 - 03:00 No, future! No, a made up future! Your present, what you experience right now is kind of the future. Imagine for a second that you are a table tennis pro. In pro table tennis balls woosh around at 25 meters per second, which is pretty fast, so let’s slow down time. Light passes from the ball to your eye in nanoseconds,   is converted into electrical impulses that reach  your brain to be processed after 100 milliseconds. Meanwhile, the ball travels 2.5 meters through the air, the length of the table.
• 03:00 - 03:30 If your brain showed you the past, where the ball was 100 milliseconds ago, it would hit you before you could react. So instead your brain takes its location, speed and direction and calculates where the ball should be in the future – by the time the information reaches you. And then it creates a fictional version of it. This is what you see, in your fake  present: a fake ball, that's somewhere else. But you don’t need to just see the ball, you want to smash it back hard. If you acted now and started swinging your arm you'd miss by a mile –
• 03:30 - 04:00 things are just too fast. So before the ball even touches your opponent's bat, your brain starts predicting where it will  likely be in space after they hit. Based on the other player's posture and your table tennis experience. But as it can’t be sure if it will be correct,  it prepares multiple different responses. Maybe the ball will be here, or here, or even here. To be ready for all of these scenarios your brain sends preprogrammed orders to the muscles you need to jump left, right or up.
• 04:00 - 04:30 Telling them to be ready for any of them at a moment's notice. For a short moment multiple ghost versions of you exist, all equally real inside your brain. And then, as your opponent is about to lay into the swing, your brain decides on a single future that it thinks is most likely. All but one ghost are deleted. You only ever experience the  ghost that won, never the potential ones. The order to the muscles to act out the winning  movement is triggered, even before the ball is hit back to you. You are totally oblivious to this –
• 04:30 - 05:00 by the time you consciously see the ball  coming at you and decide to hit it in a particular way, your body has already hit it back. In reality your brain already made all the decisions. Your conscious experience is nothing more than an invented future, a prediction based on the information your brain received a fraction of a second ago. This is not just true for extreme sports  like uhm ... table tennis, but also for walking. Walking is Time Travel After your game you are walking back home,  seemingly choosing your path and reacting to things.
• 05:00 - 05:30 Meanwhile your brain is operating in three different time spheres at once. It processes the sensory feedback of the past, it calculates the current state of your body and it predicts your future. Because walking is intense. Before the signal from your foot touching  the ground has even reached the brain, it's already sent the order to your foot to make the next step – and it has already calculated  the muscle patterns for the next two. But what if something truly catastrophic happens? There's a banana peel and you step on it and slip –
• 05:30 - 06:00 how did it get here? Listen, don’t worry about it. It turns out your brain is ready for this. So far we spoke of your “brain” making  decisions for you but this is not really true. You don’t have a central control  room where the world comes together.   In reality different parts of your body are aware of different things, at different times. Your spinal cord usually knows stuff before your brain. And even within your brain different regions process the same event at different speeds and make independent decisions. As your foot catches the peel, the gyroscope inside your ears notices a sudden change of your position in space.
• 06:00 - 06:30 It submits this information to your brain stem and spinal cord, the “things must happen quickly” section of your body. They immediately trigger emergency recovery patterns and send orders to different muscle groups. Within 200 milliseconds pre-programmed sequences activate to catch your fall. Your arms shoot out,  your other leg stiffens to support your weight, your core muscles contract to stabilise you. 100 milliseconds later, when you become aware that you are tripping, your body is already recovering.
• 06:30 - 07:00 You are only just now catching up. Ok, so we've learned that your brain is constantly predicting reality around you, makes decisions about the best way to act and then shows you an edited version. Which totally makes sense, would you really want to be in charge of that? But your brain is not just predicting the external world. Right now it's predicting a way more complex thing: You. Are YOU just a Prediction of your Brain?
• 07:00 - 07:30 Why do you feel about the world the way you do? Your sense of hunger, your energy  level and especially your emotions are not just objective reactions to what state you are in, but predictions. Your brain's prediction of what you'll need soon or need to be ready for. You are probably used to getting food or going to bed roughly around the same time – and as time approaches your brain releases hormones to prepare you. A self fulfilling prophecy. You get hungry or tired because your brain assumes this is the time when this is needed.
• 07:30 - 08:00 This is the most striking thing about your emotions. They aren't just reactions to the outside world – they're predictions. When you go to a party, your brain isn't waiting to see how you feel once you get there, based on how the party actually is. It analyses your experiences of past  parties and who it expects to be there – maybe close friends you feel safe around, maybe people you don’t know who are a less socially secure bet. Maybe your brain remembers a party where you felt anxious, and that experience stuck.
• 08:00 - 08:30 This could be pretty annoying – if your brain predicts anxiousness, it adjusts your heart rate, hormone levels and muscle tensions before you even enter the room. It prepares your body for anxiety, making you actually feel anxious. Which then confirms the brain's  prediction and gets saved for future reference.  Does this make you feel like you are just along for the ride, forced to experience whatever predictions your brain feeds you? Thankfully it’s not quite like that. Your conscious self is obviously not the decider of most things as you go through your day.
• 08:30 - 09:00 But that is not what it's good at anyway. Your brain and all of these different organ systems decide a lot of things, but they are more like butlers  taking care of all the busy work. You may not be in the driver's seat, but you are  the passenger that decides where to go. What your conscious self is good at is long term planning and abstract thinking. It's a storyteller that tells the story of your life to your brain and to yourself – wherever the edges of these  overlapping entities melt into each other.
• 09:00 - 09:30 You are able to see the big picture that your internal prediction machine could never begin to grasp. You are the part of you that can edit and write new predictions into the system. Sometimes you and your brain disagree on what is correct – but in the end you are the person in power, who tells the story about who you are in this world. A story so convincing that you experience it as undeniable reality. And as a happy accident, your conscious self is great at being happy about ice cream,
• 09:30 - 10:00 fascinated by internet videos and thinking deeply about pokemon types.