The high price of blinking

Your eyes are closed 15 minutes in most movies. You miss about six minutes of every episode of "24". And it’s all your body’s fault.

New research from the University of Tokyo finds that the brain pauses for up to 450 milliseconds with every blink. Put another way, our eyes are closed for up to 6 seconds per minute (meaning 15 minutes for a 150 minute film).

Researchers also found that film audiences tend to blink in unison and that our brains subconsciously control the timing of the blinks to ensure we don’t miss anything critical.

NewScientist has a complete breakdown of the study, which, while it technically may fall a bit out of the range of Technotainment’s area of focus, is still pretty fascinating. 

Image by StaR_DusT via Flickr.