The brain processes images in 13 milliseconds.

Neuroscientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have set the minimum time during which a person needs to display an image so that the brain can process it. The figure is 13 milliseconds. This is significantly less than expected. Previously, scientists estimated the processing time of information in about 100 milliseconds.

During the experiment, subjects were asked to signal if they saw a certain type of picture, such as a “picnic” or a “smiling couple,” while they were shown a series of 6 or 12 images with an interval of 13-80 milliseconds. The illustration above shows a sample of such a sequence of frames.

Scientists believe that such a high speed of information processing by the brain helps to control the eyes and select objects for consideration. The eye is able to move at a speed of 3 times per second, and during this time, the brain must recognize all the information in sight, be aware of what they see and decide where to look next.
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Starting the experiment, scientists assumed that they could set the limit of brain recognition half as much as the previously considered standard 100 milliseconds. To their surprise, the experiment participants demonstrated a distinct difference from random guessing at each increase in the image display speed: 80 ms, 53 ms, 40 ms, 27 ms and 13 ms. The figure of 13 ms was the minimum possible time for updating the image on a computer monitor, so it was not possible to experiment with a further reduction in the limit. But it is quite possible that the speed of the brain is even higher than that established in this study.

True, scientists suggest that image processing can actually continue in the "background" and after exposure of the image, that is, longer than 13 milliseconds. In the framework of this experiment, it was not possible to establish this fact, because the subjects were interviewed some time after the sequence of images was shown. But it is obvious that the pictures are not “erased” from the memory after 13 milliseconds, otherwise people would not be able to correctly answer the question. That is, the photos remain in some department of memory after processing. It is also known that the decision on the specific direction of eye movement is taken in 100-140 milliseconds.

Theoretically, this study allows us to conclude that a person is able to recognize a video sequence with a frequency of 77 frames per second or more, which was previously considered impossible. Now we have to update the information on the corresponding page in Wikipedia, which claims the ability of the brain to process only 10-12 separate images per second.

Scientific work published in the journal "Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics" ( free access ).