Where does time go when you blink?

Abstract

Retinal input is frequently lost due to eye blinks, yet humans rarely notice these gaps in visual1 input. While previous studies focused on the psychophysical and neural correlates of 2 diminished awareness to blinks, the impact of blinks on the perceived time of concurrent 3 events is unknown. Here, we investigated whether the subjective sense of time is altered by 4 spontaneous eye blinks, and how this link may inform mechanisms of time perception. We 5 found that participants significantly underestimated the duration of a visual stimulus when 6 a blink occurred during the stimulus. Importantly, this effect was not present when durations 7 of an auditory stimulus were judged. These results point to a link between spontaneous 8 blinks, previously demonstrated to induce suppression of activity in early visual cortex, and 9 a compression of subjective time. The findings suggest that ongoing encoding within 10 modality-specific sensory cortices, independent of conscious awareness, inform the 11 subjective sense of time.12

»Hallo Schönheiten!«

“…Die Diskussionskultur der YouTube Kommentarfelder hat einen sehr schlechten Ruf. »Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity«, schreibt die US-amerikanische Wochenzeitschrift »Time«, »just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred« (Grossman 2006). Die Analyse empirischer Online-Daten macht die Auseinandersetzung mit Hasskommentaren notwendig, die in Diskussionsbereichen des Webs, besonders auf YouTube, allgegenwärtig scheinen und zunehmend als Problem anerkannt werden.…”