Why our Sensory Data Information Timing is critical to Construct Our Reality

Combining all these streams of sensory data is an astonishing feat to pull off, but there’s one factor which really adds complication… timing.

We have just looked at the phenomenon of brain blindness. Where the brain loses the ability to process visual data coming from the eyes.

All those streams of sensory data are processed by the brain at different speeds. For our reality to be constructed, they have to be synchronised.

Well, the easiest way for me to show you is right here at a racetrack. When there is a loud sound, the starting gun, it feels as though you react to it instantly. But you don’t.

Watching sprinters in slow motion, we can see that there is a gap between the gun going off and their start. They may train to make this gap as small as possible, but their biology imposes limits.

Light travels faster than sound

Processing that sound then sending out the signals to the muscles to move will take around two-tenths of a second. And that time really can’t be improved on.

In a sport where thousandths of a second can be the difference between winning and losing, it seems surprisingly slow. So why do we use a pistol to start sprinters? Everyone knows that light travels faster than sound, so why not use a light?

Brain Response

We set up a test to show you. In the upper screen the athlete responds to a light. In the lower screen the athlete responds to the sound of a gun.

You can see that when our start is triggered by a flash of light, we respons more slowly. It takes 40 milliseconds longer to process. Why?

Because the visual system is more complex. It’s bigger - it involves almost a third of the brain. So while all of the electrical signals inside the brain travel at the same speed, the ones related to sight go through more complex processing,and that takes time.

Sensory Data Timing

This isn’t just about hearing and seeing. Every type of sensory data takes a different amount of time to process.

You will react slower to a touch on the foot than one on the hand. The astonishing thing is that our brains hide all this.

When I clap my hands,everything seems synchronised. Why? Well, your brain is pulling off fancy editing tricks.

What it takes to be reality is actually the delayed version that collects all the information from the senses before it decides on a story of what happened. That means you live in the past. By the time you think the moment “now” occurs… The moment has passed before you are aware of it happening.

To conjure a reality from all that sensory information, your brain needs around half a second. That’s an unbridgeable gap between an event occurring… and your conscious experience of it. In that half a second, a lot of things need to happen.