[Emc2 (OP)]

1) can your brain, or any brain produce thoughts faster then the speed of light, or close to it ?

2) speed of my eyes focusing on something ? in other words, the speed of sight ?

3) the speed of the brain processing information that I do "see" ?

4)  at what speed does 'time dilation" occur ?

  any help is appreciated, for a theory about observation affecting space/time

[Soul Surfer]

Human physical functions can only happen in milliseconds.  The possible exception is hearing where some sub millisecond effects can be detected.  This is vastly slower than the speed of light or even the speed of sound.

Significant time dilation only happens when velocities approach the speed of light which is around one nanosecond per foot old units or 300,000 Km/sec.  It is only in very precise time measurements at slower speeds (eg GPS) that relativistic corrections are needed at lower speeds.

[Emc2 (OP)]

hmmm... ok, I found speed of thought is    http://www.technologyreview.com/view/415041/new-measure-of-human-brain-processing-speed/

  but dont know how to get that to MPH

 Also it seems that as soon as I open my eyes, I can see everything, it seems that sight at least equals the speed of light, as it uses light itself to see, so to speak...  maybe ?

  which might give vision, time dilation in certain circumstances, even if it is close enough to the speed.


 is it possible that these functions happen that fast


 

[evan_au]

Thought is carried out as a massively parallel network of nerve cells. The individual nerves conduct electrical signals in the range of 3-80 meters per second. This is a very small fraction of the speed of light, which is 300 million meters per second.

We hardly notice blinking (unless something draws our attention to it). But this regularly shuts down our visual system for 100-400ms. And when we open our eyes, we only really take in a very small part of the visual scene, in the center of our vision. Our brain constructs the rest out of what it "knows" is out there.

The P300 response is produced by the brain when it sees something of significance, and occurs about 250-500ms after seeing the event. If visual processing occurred at the speed of light, your brain would respond to events on your computer screen in about 2 nanoseconds, not hundreds of milliseconds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P300_%28neuroscience%29

[Emc2 (OP)]

seems my theory might not work.  thank you all for input.

 I was hoping time dilation due to vision and mental processing happening close to the speed of light might account for those moments when your in a fight or doing sports for example, and it seems that time slows down on a perceptual level when your operating on a purely instinctual level, how things operating on instinct perceptually happen in "slow motion".


 oh well, so much for that idea......LOL

[yor_on]

hmmm... ok, I found speed of thought is    http://www.technologyreview.com/view/415041/new-measure-of-human-brain-processing-speed/

  but dont know how to get that to MPH

 Also it seems that as soon as I open my eyes, I can see everything, it seems that sight at least equals the speed of light, as it uses light itself to see, so to speak...  maybe ?

  which might give vision, time dilation in certain circumstances, even if it is close enough to the speed.


 is it possible that these functions happen that fast

The Brain is like a neural net where you get synapses firing, and maybe you can get several firing from for example a visual input simultaneously. If that happens those synapses all are communicating at the same time and some logical overlay should exist for putting together that information into a 'outcome'. If it is so then this logical overlay, as it is not inside the restrictions put upon the electrochemical responses might be seen as FTL, possibly, but probably not? It's also about how the neural 'stations' interact with each other, it seems as if there are some places interacting more, aka firing, than others, also depending on input as a guess, like hearing relative visual, as well as the emotional state at the moment, etc. But maybe, sometimes, the logical overlay(s) can produce a answer that seems to come as a 'gestalt', although still steered by the neurological shortcoming of speed, as you always will need a input to get to the processing of it. As I see it.

[Emc2 (OP)]

yes that makes sense.  Maybe it can process just fast enough, to get a time dilation at certain moments as mentioned above..

 ok, thanks, good info.