Here’s something that never fails to amaze me. But in order to explain, I’m going to have to ask you to try a little demonstration. Don’t worry, it’ll be super quick!
All you’ve got to do is find a room somewhere in your house, or wherever you are, that has an analogue clock with a second hand.
Now, stand facing the clock but with your head slightly tilted and your eyes to the side looking at the opposite wall, and then in one quick motion, move your eyes so you’re focusing on the second hand.
Notice anything odd? Maybe not. Well, try again a couple of times and hopefully, on one occasion you may observe something slightly - peculiar. You may notice that the second hand seems to freeze for just slightly too long. It seems to stay there for an extra half-second. It’s almost as though time has temporarily frozen.
Well, this effect isn’t some sort of glitch in the matrix, and for those of you who couldn’t see anything, I promise I’m not just making it up. It’s a very real illusion, known as chronostasis.
I’ll attempt to briefly explain why this happens.
When we make sudden eye movements (known as saccades), the information coming from our eyes is essentially ignored by our brain - we stop processing visual images. This is to prevent us from experiencing blurry vision that would likely give a constant state of nausea and disorientation. Once our saccade finishes, and we focus on the clock, a signal is sent to our brain which ends this suppression and resumes processing images like normal.
However, our brain realises that there has been a gap in perception, a period of time that seemingly went missing. And so we fill in this gap with the image that we focus on when the saccade ends - the clock. Our brain gives us false memory, making us believe we have been looking at the clock since the saccade began, not since it ended. This is why, when we suddenly look around and aren’t processing any visual images, we don’t go temporarily blind. That gap in visual perception is simply substituted with the image of the clock.
Of course, this explains our time-freezing illusion. Our brain makes us believe we have been looking at the clock for an extra half a second - the half a second when our eyes darted from the wall to the clock.
This is a fascinating reminder of how powerful our brain really is - it manages to change our perception of time and practically modifies our memories