There have been wise quotes made all over the world of research and development, on human reflexes and how we are superior to the rest of the animal kingdom (that’s if you still count us in it). However, this research by Tamani Nakano at the University of Tokyo brings forth some startling facts into view. If you look back and wonder about the blinking pattern that our eyes follow then you will notice that it’s a few times every minute. Each blink costs us 450ms of visual information. This totals up to around 6 seconds of blind time in a minute. Taking the case of a 150 minute movie, it is plain logic that we miss about 15 minutes with our eyes closed (for a blink). Losing confidence in y our eyelids? Don’t. The study by Nakano’s team proved that we blink in a highly synchronized pattern that matches the breaks during video playback. They used a silent movie to check the synchronization of blinks among subjects. It was noticed that the not-so-important parts of the movie had people blinking.

This proves that we’re evolving in accordance with the world of digital entertainment. Let’s hope that we may not find it necessary to use 3D glasses in the next fire thousand years. Cheers for giving me hope Mr. Darwin.
[Newscientist]