Your reality is actually 15 seconds long

The present moment, as you are experiencing it this very instant, is directly influenced by the previous 15 seconds of your life, reports Quartz. Researchers from MIT and the University of California, Berkeley, have dubbed this phenomenon the “continuity field,” and according to a study they published last week in Nature Neuroscience, this effect could provide valuable background on how we pay attention to the task at hand — as well as how we don’t.

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The original research article is here

Serial dependence in visual perception

Abstract

Visual input often arrives in a noisy and discontinuous stream, owing to head and eye movements, occlusion, lighting changes, and many other factors. Yet the physical world is generally stable; objects and physical characteristics rarely change spontaneously. How then does the human visual system capitalize on continuity in the physical environment over time? We found that visual perception in humans is serially dependent, using both prior and present input to inform perception at the present moment. Using an orientation judgment task, we found that, even when visual input changed randomly over time, perceived orientation was strongly and systematically biased toward recently seen stimuli. Furthermore, the strength of this bias was modulated by attention and tuned to the spatial and temporal proximity of successive stimuli. These results reveal a serial dependence in perception characterized by a spatiotemporally tuned, orientation-selective operator—which we call a continuity field—that may promote visual stability over time.

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Very interesting.

>Yet the physical world is generally stable; objects and physical characteristics rarely change spontaneously. How then does the human visual system capitalize on continuity in the physical environment over time? We found that visual perception in humans is serially dependent, using both prior and present input to inform perception at the present moment.

Can’t see how else it’d be done. Few million years of experience of material earth and physical forces (including other creatures behaviours) maybe shaped something.

transition said:

>Yet the physical world is generally stable; objects and physical characteristics rarely change spontaneously. How then does the human visual system capitalize on continuity in the physical environment over time? We found that visual perception in humans is serially dependent, using both prior and present input to inform perception at the present moment.

Can’t see how else it’d be done. Few million years of experience of material earth and physical forces (including other creatures behaviours) maybe shaped something.

Otherwise known as…the brain makes up the bits to fill the gaps. It’s how visual illusions work.

>Otherwise known as…the brain makes up the bits to fill the gaps. It’s how visual illusions work.

Don’t like the title much, doubtful anyone ‘normalish’ right of centre on the bell curve has a fifteen second reality, or that it’s derived so, though looking at the constant reiteration on TV shows these days for channel surfers and people looking in someway into a show, maybe it is of the past fifteen seconds constituted.

I do however think something of the visual processing system is duplicated or part duplicated in downstream processing elsewhere (contributing to human consciousness – the projections of consciousness), not sure if wetware (hardwiring) entirely, doubtful it would be entirely.

My immediate thoughts regards the fifteen seconds thing was that maybe this corresponds with the time required of two people running toward each other and one of them having to make judgements and act to decelerate as not to collide. If the convergence speed were say 50KM/H, and one alone does all the work to judge and slow, but still wants to approach at maximum speed (applies to intercept/capture/hunting situations)……anyway, just a wandering thought.

Just one person example say fast run 25KM/H is what, 104m/15 seconds, typical walking speed might be 1/5 that, so say 20m/15seconds, probably a bit more.

For traversing ground this might be important, finding food.

Regards proximity to others, being ‘fifteen seconds’ away could be important (‘seconds away’, to give it a modern chrono-temporal handle).

Dunno, just fucking with a few ideas, don’t go much on this modern thing of referencing everything to what clocks measure, bit of a disease of the modern world the chrono-centric reality business.

When Mythbusters tested the five-second rule, the rule that states that food dropped on the ground will not be significantly contaminated with bacteria if it is picked up within five seconds, I objected to the busting because the rule really relates to “your reality is actually 15 seconds long” – anything not picked up within 15 seconds is forgotten.