"Narrator:" "Take a look at the image on your screen." "You'll notice there are two blinking dots." "Question are the dots alternating." "or are they blinking together at the exact same time?" "do you have your answer?" "If you said they're alternating, you're like most people." "And like most people..." "You're wrong." "Surprise." "They're actually blinking together at the exact same time." "If you want to find out why your brain tricked you stick around." "This is a show about your brain and how it perceives time." "For the next half hour we're going to mess with your mind." "As we put you through a series of games and experiments." "Male:" "That's amazing." "Narrator:" "You'll learn the secret of why time flies when you're having fun." "Or why it seems to slow down when life throws you a curveball" "Best of all, you'll be able to use what we've taught you about time to make a fast buck off your friends." "Pay attention." "You're just in time... for Brain Games!" "Female:" "Ooh...game over!" "Narrator:" "It's what wakes you up in the morning lets you know when your toast is ready and gets you to work." "It's the slim margin between first and second place." "And can be the difference between a close call and disaster." "Sometimes it's measured in eons." "And other times. just seconds." "Jason:" "You know, they say that riding a bull is the longest eight seconds of your life." "Man:" "Right on, cowboy." "Jason:" "That's the funny thing about time." "It feels malleable, yet it's totally fixed." "No eight seconds is actually longer than any other eight seconds." "So why is it that sometimes it feels as though time is flying by and other times it feels as though it's standing still?" "I mean, does time even exist?" "or is it all just a bunch of bull?" "Narrator:" "Here's a quick game for you." "Without looking at a clock see if you can guess how long this show has been on." "Got your answer?" "Take a look at your screen!" "That's an exact running time from the top of the show until right now." "So were you close?" "I bet you were within 30 seconds." "Jason:" "Has it been 8 seconds yet?" "Whoa!" "Narrator:" "So, how does your brain do it?" "How can just three and a half pounds of tissue measure something so abstract so invisible as time?" "It's all in how you look at it." "Let's take another look at those blinking dots." "Here they are, alternating..." "or so it would appear." "Watch what happens when we remove the outer rings." "I promise we're not altering the image of the blinking dots at all." "Just removing the rings around them." "Weird, right?" "Alternating." "Together in time." "Alternating...." "Together in time." "So ... what's happening?" "On this illusion, your brain is getting mixed signals." "Since each of the dots disappears when surrounded by its own color." "And because that happens at different times on the right" "And left side." "Your brain gets tricked into seeing an alternating pattern, rather than a..." "synchronous one." "Just by tweaking the shading on two circles, we caused your brain to mix up an extremely basic order of events." "And made you think the dots were blinking at different times." "Here to explain why your brain gets confused, is Caltech Neuroscientist, Dr. Chess Stetson." "Chess:" "As humans, we have this sense that time flows forward and we're just along for the ride that we're essentially passive observers." "But the truth is far more bizarre." "To make a coherent story of your experiences, your brain can actually warp and shift time, giving you a false impression of the speed and order of events and the world around you." "Jason:" "Want to see what he means?" "We're going to show you a series of images watch them closely because we'll have a question for you once they all cycle through." "Ready?" "Jason:" "Okay, so here's the question we held the photos of the kittens up on the screen for one second each." "How much longer did we show you the photo of the javelina?" "Yeah, that's the freaky thing with the fangs." "It's called a javelina." "Let's look at them one more time to give you a chance to think about it." "So what do you think?" "Did we hold up the javelina photo a half second longer?" "A full second longer?" "Narrator:" "Before we give you the answer, let's head out to the rodeo where Dr. Chess Stetson is running a similar experiment on the perception of time." "Chess:" "Smile for the camera!" "Narrator:" "On the surface, this appears to be a standard photo booth." "where participants take a few pictures of themselves with one of the stars of the rodeo." "Chess:" "You guys look great!" "Narrator:" "But what our participants don't know is that in the middle of their photos... we've thrown in a little surprise." "Chess:" "So how did it feel to have your picture taken with a real rodeo champion?" "Girl #1:" "It was awesome!" "Chess:" "Let's have a look at your pictures." "So which picture was on for a longer period of time than the others?" "Girl #1:" "Uh - the girl by herself." "Chess:" "All right, how long do you think that that surprise picture was on?" "How many seconds?" "Girl #1:" "Maybe three." "Chess:" "And how long would you say that the other pictures were on for?" "Girl #1:" "One." "Narrator:" "Do you agree...?" "Do you also think the photo of the swimsuit model was on for a longer period of time?" "Let's see what some other people think." "Female:" "Oh." "Male:" "Wow!" "Chess:" "All right, what did you think?" "Girl #2:" "I like the one of the guy." "Chess:" "Anything surprising in there?" "Girl #2:" "One of those were not us!" "Guy #3:" "Yeah one of those were not us." "Chess:" "Did you feel like that picture was on for a different amount of time than the others?" "Guy #2:" "I think longer." "Girl #5:" "It was on longer." "Guy #3:" "It was longer." "Chess:" "How long did you feel like it was on for?" "Guy #2:" "Four seconds?" "Girl #5:" "Definitely more than five seconds." "Chess:" "So, what if I told you that all of the pictures were on for exactly one second?" "Girl #2:" "I don't know." "Guy #2:" "Impossible." "Girl #2:" "Really?" "Narrator:" "So what do you think?" "Turns out that Chess was telling the truth." "The photos of the javelina and the swimsuit models were on for exactly the same amount of time as all the other photos one second." "If you thought it was visible longer don't feel bad." "So did over 70% of our participants." "So what causes your brain to play tricks on your perception of time?" "Chess:" "We in neuroscience call this The Oddball Effect." "We think then when something unusual happens;" "your brain devotes more neural resources to it." "And as a result, it feels in retrospect like it took a longer period of time." "Guy #3:" "That's amazing." "Chess:" "Enjoy the rodeo!" "Girl amp;" "Guy #2:" "Thanks a lot!" "Appreciate it!" "Guy #2:" "Even after he told me, I still felt like that picture was longer." "Girl #1:" "I don't feel like I can trust my own internal clock anymore." "Chess:" "So this is one example of how a simple perceptual manipulation can completely warp and shift your perception of time." "It just goes to show that we're pretty bad at estimating time in the first place." "Narrator:" "But wait... what about the stars of the rodeo?" "Their success lives and dies on an accurate sense of time since the only way to score points is to stay on their bull for at least eight seconds?" "Are they also bad at estimating time?" "Bo Schroader:" "Eight seconds is long time when you're battling a 1500 pound animal Everything happens fast, but it's slow at the same time." "When they say it's the longest eight seconds of your life, they mean it." "Narrator:" "Think you could judge how long eight seconds is if you were strapped to a 1500 pound animal?" "Play along by imagining that you're up there about to take the ride of your life." "When we say quot;goquot; we want you to close your eyes and don't open them until you think exactly eight seconds have passed...." "Got it?" "Ready...?" "Set... go!" "Time's up!" "How close did you get?" "Most people are off by at least a second or two." "Wanna see how a real rodeo star does when asked the same question?" "Let's find out." "Adam:" "Go." "Casey: quot;...now!" "quot;" "Adam:" "Hold that up." "Casey:" "Was I close?" "Narrator:" "As for the rest of us we'll just have to go on with our average perceptions of time." "But as it turns out...that may not be such a bad thing." "In your day-to-day life, your brain perceives time as coasting along at a relatively even pace." "Like a car driving on the highway at a constant speed, the mile markers pass by without much notice..." "But when a section of road demands your focused attention like a sharp curve ahead or a lane closing you ease off the gas to accommodate for the unexpected changes." "Your brain responds just like your car." "When new or important information demands your attention it can slow down time to help you fully process what's happening around you." "As a result your brain's perception of time can vary substantially from moment to moment." "It's why people say, Time flies when you're having fun." "Or..." "A watched pot never boils." "But in both instances, time isn't speeding up or slowing down." "It just feels that way." "Another way your brain can change how time feels... has to do with the amount of information coming in." "As long as information comes at us in an orderly fashion, we can make sense of the world around us." "But when overwhelmed by too much information or too many choices your brain can freeze by default." "And easily lose track of what's happening around you." "So, let's slow things down... and head out to the Nevada desert, where my friend" "Apollo Robbins is going to test your brain's ability to handle the information he throws at it." "Pay attention!" "Apollo is going to place a small rabbit inside this juggling pin." "Try to follow it if you can!" "Apollo:" "Did you follow it?" "Pretty easy, wasn't it?" "This time, let's make it a little tougher for you." "The little rabbit." "The pin." "Try to follow him." "If you can." "Ready?" "Did you follow him?" "When it comes to time and rabbits it's easy to lose track." "Narrator:" "So why was it so much harder to keep track of the rabbit after Apollo added more pins?" "Simply put:" "Your brain didn't have enough time to process the large amount of information flying around the screen." "Computers with powerful processors can handle lots of information at the same time enabling them to work faster." "But adding more pins to our game was like Information Overload for you." "And since your brain is not a computer it couldn't handle it all at once." "It's like having 10 second's worth of info thrown at you but only one second to take it all in." "And the longer it takes for you to process input, the more you're likely to miss." "Let's play one more quick game to give you a better idea about what that means." "Watch these horses running and decide if all four legs are ever in the air at the same time... ready?" "Narrator:" "Okay that was tough Let's try again..." "Even on a second viewing it's just too fast to tell." "Let's try with a different horse and give you a little more time to get your answer." "Here we go..." "Still pretty difficult to tell, right?" "Let's take another look..." "or rather, a slower look." "Ah... so they are all in the air at one time." "Don't feel bad if you missed this one." "Just like the pins in the Apollo juggling trick... at regular speed, the horse's legs move too fast for you to track them all at once." "But what does this tell you about how your brain perceives time?" "a lot, actually." "When it comes to experiencing time, your brain has very specific speed limits of what it can and cannot perceive." "In fact, there's only about a three second window in which your brain decides what new information it wants to store." "And if you're overwhelmed by the sheer mass of input or if there's no real motivation to process it all your brain will simply stop taking it in..." "For example you'd be hard pressed to tell me how many times a helicopter's propeller rotates every second." "Or on the flip side... soak up every moment of a flower blooming..." "And while it might be fun to live at a faster speed we'd miss out on so many things that make life worth living." "And even though a slower life might give us twice as much detail, we'd only experience half as much while we're alive." "Thankfully, our brain's sense of time has evolved to process input at a certain rate one that isn't too fast or too slow... it's well..." "just right." "And that's the beauty of your brain." "Not only does it see the world at exactly the right pace, but it can even compensate for anything the world throws at it." "And nowhere is that more true than when it comes to sight and sound." "Crew:" "Sound, speed." "Marker." "Jason:" "Let's play a little game." "I want you to focus your attention on the car all the way down there." "The one furthest away." "Are you ready?" "Watch and listen." "Now did you see and hear the door slam shut?" "Of course you did." "But did you happen to notice that the actual sound of the door shutting didn't seem to quite match the visual of the door shutting?" "Here, let's try it again." "You caught the delay this time didn't you?" "Well in the TV and film business, we call this being out of sync." "So why does this happen?" "Well it turns out that you see and hear things separately." "Narrator:" "And since, as we know, the speed of light is faster than the speed of sound if the car is far enough away, you actually see the door shut long before you..." "hear it slam." "Jason:" "So what do you think will happen when we do that with the car in the middle?" "It's a little more difficult to tell right?" "As it turns out, the real magic doesn't happen until you get a little bit closer." "Chess:" "Did you notice?" "This time the sight and the sound of the door closing seems perfectly in sync, what did we do differently?" "Nothing." "The sight and the sound still arrived at your eyes and ears separately but because this car was closer, your brain connected the two and made them seem like they were simultaneous." "In fact, any difference of sight and sound less than about a tenth of a second and your brain will connect them and make them seem to be simultaneous." "Jason:" "Alright well, do you notice anything strange about the way that I'm speaking?" "I bet you don't but I assure you something's off." "It turns out that the editor of the show has delayed my voice to trail the image by about a tenth of a second." "But you can't tell." "But it turns out that my voice is literally not in sync with the words coming out of my mouth." "But only when you actually shift it a little bit more do you actually notice a difference." "How amazing is that?" "Narrator:" "We've shown you a lot of different ways that your brain deals with time." "But did you also knowthat your brain can go back in time?" "Here's a simple sentence." "Take a look." "Try to get a picture in your head of what this might look like...." "Got it?" "Does this look pretty close to what you imagined?" "Okay, try another sentence." "Visualized that one?" "Did you imagine something like this?" "You might be thinking okay, big deal..." "I read the sentences and saw the same thing that you showed what does this have to do with time?" "Think for a second about where the word 'mouse' was in each of the sentences." "In both instances, it occurred a full five words earlier than these words -- that helped you decide what exactly we meant... by 'mouse.'" "When reading the first sentence did your brain ever see a small rodent?" "When reading the second sentence did you ever picture a computer device eating cheese?" "In this test, your brain acts like a mini time machine." "Because the type of mouse isn't defined until the end of the sentence... your brain freezes the word quot;mousequot; as it continues to read along." "Then, after learning what type of mouse - computer ... or rodent - it travels back in time to supply you with an appropriate image." "Jason:" "It all happens in an instant and incredibly you never notice the time lag the interval of time, no matter how small, between two related phenomena." "Narrator:" "Like the time lag between when you see a stop sign and decide to put your foot on the brake." "Or the lag between when you see the word mouse then create the visual image five words later." "Jason:" "Your brain works too fast for you to notice these tiny imperfections, but believe me they're in there." "Narrator:" "And in any situation where your brain has the slightest deficit..." "Deception Specialist Apollo Robbins -- sees opportunity." "Apollo:" "They say the hand is quicker than they eye." "But is that always true?" "Michael, I'd like to try this as a game with you." "Do you have any cash on you?" "Michael:" "Yeah." "Apollo:" "What do you got?" "Michael:" "Uhhh ten." "Apollo:" "Ten dollars, okay." "Let's do this as kind of like a little bar bet." "Crumple it into a ball...then would you hold out your hand flat, above it." "Keep your hand flat, as flat as you can." "Now as fast as you can, I wanna see you grab that bill." "That's pretty quick." "So what if we escalated that and I took $100..." "I say finders keepers." "We put that as a crumpled ball on the table." "That becomes our target." "And I'm gonna put my hand about here." "So your hand is already halfway there, but do you think it's possible for me to grab the bill before you do?" "Michael:" "No." "Apollo:" "No, okay." "When you see my hand begin to move," "I want you to grab the money." "Michael:" "Okay." "Narrator:" "What do you think, would you take the bet?" "Your 10 dollars against Apollo's one hundred?" "Plus you have a one-foot head start to grab the money first?" "Of course you would, right?" "Well, let's see how this plays out." "Michael:" "Wow!" "Narrator:" "And he wasn't the only one who took the bet." "Female:" "Dang it!" "Apollo:" "In this case I get to keep it." "Perhaps we give you a second chance." "All right?" "Sometimes people expect that I'm able to do this because I have fast hands, due to the nature of the work that I do." "Instead of me doing this, I think it'd be more interesting if someone else did it." "Journey, could you join us, please?" "Hello, Journey." "I'm going to ask you to sit up here." "Journey, try to get that bill." "Woman:" "Oh dang... game over!" "Narrator:" "So what do you think?" "Does Apollo have super human speed?" "Does the little girl?" "Are these participants all incompetent?" "Is this some kind of sleight of hand trick...?" "Stumped?" "Apollo is simply using your brain's time lag against you." "Once your mind processes his movements and registers that you need to start moving it's too late." "He's already got your money in his hand." "Keep this game in mind next time you're at a bar or restaurant with friends." "Like Apollo and his young assistant did here, you could walk out with a tidy little profit." "Great job." "High five." "That's your allowance for the week." "That's all you get." "Journey:" "Okay." "Man:" "What about my 20 dollar bill?" "Apollo:" "She just made it." "I guess it's true what they say time really is money." "Narrator:" "Time's up!"