That's a bit of a simplification. It's more like they found that visual stimulation from 15 seconds ago can influence what you're seeing now, and that has been known for years. In fact, it's at least partly explained by the "thalamic-cortical feedback loop" circuits in the brain, where sensory input comes into the thalamus and is distributed to the relevant sensory processing centers in the cortex. For example, visual data comes into the thalamus and is sent to the V1 area in the very back of the brain, and the data is processed and sent to V2, which processes it and sends it to V3, etc. At every step, some of that post-processed data gets sent back to the thalamus where it is merged with the incoming raw sensory data which is sent to V1, rinse and repeat (not sure if any data is sent from the thalamus to V2 -I think not, and that's it's one-way except with V1, but don't remember for sure).
It shouldn't be surprising that given the above scenario, data from a few seconds before is still measurably influencing the current stream of raw data. And this phenomenon will likely eventually be found for every sense: extremely recent past experience influences how we perceive the present moment via all our senses. I guess the question is: how long should this effect last, and perhaps that is what is notable about this research. 15 seconds IS a pretty long time for that kind of sensory loop data to be sticking around. Perhaps the circuits are more complicated than the above description suggests. Of course, perhaps what scientists are measuring is the length of time that highly stressed (unenlightened) people show this kind of influence, and that more enlightened people will show a shorter period where the immediate past influences present... Hmmm... emailing Fred Travis and company with this speculation. It seems a testable way of distinguishing more enlightened from less enlightened when looking at differences between people in CC and not in CC. Of course, there's no guarantee that such differences exist, but its a testable hypothesis, etc. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <jr_esq@...> wrote : Researchers have found reality is 15 seconds long. Do you agree with this? http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/9/5598130/your-reality-is-actually-fifteen-seconds-long http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/9/5598130/your-reality-is-actually-fifteen-seconds-long
