A picture of a human brain taken by a positron emission tomography scanner, also called PET scan, is seen on a screen on January 9, 2019. (Credit: FRED TANNEAU/AFP via Getty Images) BERKELEY, Calif. - A new study shows that the human brain may actually live up to 15 seconds in the past.Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Aberdeen discovered that the brain shows images from seconds in the past, instead of an updated real-time picture.According to the study, published in Science Advances, researchers analyzed the mechanism of "change blindness," which is when people fail to notice small changes over time."The brain automatically smooths our visual input over time.
Instead of analyzing every single visual snapshot, we perceive in a given moment an average of what we saw in the past 15 seconds," co-authors Mauro Manassi and David Whitney wrote in The Conversation on Jan.
26. "In other words, the brain is like a time machine which keeps sending us back in time. It’s like an app that consolidates our visual input every 15 seconds into one impression so that we can handle everyday life.
If our brains were always updating in real time, the world would feel like a chaotic place with constant fluctuations in light, shadow and movement.