Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Tall People Live in the Past.

In an interview on npr David Eagleman explains how shorter people might actually live closer to the present than taller people.

He explains that your brain is constantly weaving a coherent environment for you based on many sources of information.  For example when someone yells to you, you see them yelling slightly before you hear them, light being faster than sound.  Then your brain will re sync the two different streams of information and make them seem to be happening at the same time.  Your brain will do this for signals that are up to 1/10th of a second mismatched. The human brain does this by essencially using a buffer,  and putting the faster signal on hold until the slower one gets there and then playing them at the same time.  Eagleman hypothosizes that the specific time delay for each person may be different based upon their height with taller people haveing a longer delay because it takes them longer to get information from their toes, than shorter people.

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