The human brain is a quietly astonishing organ, often operating in ways that pass completely beneath our radar. Whether it's the way our eyes track movement or the way our bodies register emotions, neuroscience is continually uncovering the ways in which our experiences are inextricably linked.
In a recent video posted to Instagram, Dr Sermed Mezher, a family medicine physician and health content creator in England, has shared three surprising facts from neuroscience that explain how our brains process vision, pain, and sleep.
Here’s a closer look at what he explained
Humans are “motion blind” for hours each day
According to Dr Mezher, we are all effectively blind to motion for about 40 minutes to two hours every day. This occurs during rapid eye movements, or saccades, where our eyes rapidly shift from one point to another.
“During rapid eye movements known as saccades, the brain employs a sophisticated neurological ‘editing’ process called saccadic suppression to maintain visual clarity. When your eyes jump quickly from one point to another, the image across the retina moves at a velocity that would normally result in a disorienting, motion-blurred smear. To prevent this, the brain momentarily shuts down the processing of visual information during the duration of the “jump.” This brief window of functional blindness ensures that your internal perception of the world remains stable and sharp, rather than a shaky mess of streaks”, he said.
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This is also why, when looking at a clock, the first second seems to drag on longer than the rest. Our brains are temporarily stretching time to provide a stable visual experience.
Emotional pain can feel physically real
Heartache is not just in the brain. According to Dr. Mezher, emotional pain and physical pain have the same playground in the brain, where the anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex are activated for the two types of pain.
Since these areas can sense both emotional hurt and physical injury, powerful emotions such as grief, rejection, and heartbreak can manifest themselves physically. This may be illustrated by the fact that since these areas can sense pain, powerful emotions such as grief, rejection, and heartbreak can manifest themselves physically.
“Your brain has shared processing centres for emotional and physical pain. These include the anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex. So heartache can genuinely hurt”, he highlighted.
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REM sleep temporarily paralyses the body
During REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, our brain decides to shut off the paralysing effect, so that the human doesn’t act out the dream.
Dr Mezher further adds that this might have helped our ancestors in certain ways, like when they sleep in dangerous areas, like in the tree tops. This system also causes sleep paralysis, when a person feels like they are waking up but their muscles are still quiet.
He said, “Your brain functionally paralyses you when you enter REM sleep. Could have a few different functions like stopping you from acting out your dreams of becoming a bedroom base jumper. It also would be particularly useful if we or our ancestors slept in compromising positions like high up in a tree. It's also thought to be a central mechanism during the pretty frightening experience of sleep paralysis where you wake up, are fully conscious but cannot move.”
