Brain Slow to Judge Fast-Moving Objects Head-On

health.yahoo.com — If you are not experienced at dodging flying or speeding objects, your best bet may be to just get out of the way, a new study says. People's visual systems judge objects -- balls or cars, for example -- coming straight toward them based more on past experience than actual perception, according to findings published in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. For most, the world is a slow place. "We may think we live in a fast moving, hectic world, but statistically, our environment moves around us slowly," Andrew Welchman, a researcher with the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, said in a council news release. "Apart from the odd speeding car, buildings, landscape and walls around us all move past us at slow and predictable speeds. Our brains are constantly building up a statistical picture of the world around and, based on experience, it is a statistically slow world." "When an object moves quickly -- be it a football, cricket ball or, for our ancestors, a spear -- our brains have to interpret the movement rapidly and, because our brains draw on experience, it's often biased by what it already knows. The less certain we are about what we see, the more we are influenced by the brain's statistical assumptions, which means in some circumstances, we get it wrong."

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