Human Time Perception and its Illusions

Human Time Perception and its Illusions

Eagleman*, David M.
Current Opinion in Neurobiology 18, no. 2 (2008): 131-136
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conb.2008.06.002

* Professor at Stanford & Baylor, Guggenheim Fellow

“The visual system brags a long history of parlaying illusions into an understanding of the neurobiology [1], but only recently has the study of temporal illusions begun to blossom. New illusions of duration, order, and simultaneity illustrate that temporal introspection can often be a poor guide to the timing of physical events in the world. Temporal judgments are constructions of the brain, and, as we will see below, surprisingly easy to manipulate experimentally [2]. [...]

Duration judgments at short intervals are subject to several types of illusions. Here is a do-it-yourself demonstration to set the stage: look at your own eyes in a mirror and move your point of focus back and forth so that you are looking at your right eye, then at your left eye, and back again. Your eyes take tens of milliseconds to move ballistically from one position to the other—but here is the mystery: you never see your own eyes move. What happens to the gaps in time while your eyes are moving? Why doesn’t your brain care about the small absences of visual input?”

— David M Eagleman