... people had a different reaction time?

Maybe you know the situation, a friend is calling your name, but you don’t react. For the 3rd time finally you answer. Very annoyed he is asking you why you don’t react when he wants to speak with you. But actually you reacted, you just didn’t respond because your brain said, okay this information is useless. How did it come to this misunderstanding?

First of all, every sound wave which is more than 5 and less than 130 Decibel moves the liquid of the Cochea inside your ear which creates an action potential going directly to your auditory cortex. Like the Thalamus does, all the information will be sorted in trash or go into your brain.

For example, you sit outside on the beach, thinking of what to do at the weekend. You hear the waves, the birds, the cars, some children, but you don’t really perceive what you hear because you are very deep focused on something else. Now, someone is calling your name, as loudly as the waves or the birds are, but you directly recognize and answer. Why that? The before mentioned auditory cortex is sensitized about your name and thought maybe this can be something important. Also some voices you know like the ones from a friend of yours or your parents should usually not go to the trash.

Okay but now let’s go back to the example. Maybe you remember that a friend of yours wanted to tell you something. Why can this happen to not be heard? Maybe because you were very focused on something that your Cortex even put this information in the trash.

Enough of the explaining and let’s go back to the main topic. The average reaction time for hearing something is around 0,17 seconds. A bit less it is for feeling and a bit more for seeing. Actually this is very few. Let’s say you need around one or two seconds more, which is basically 10 times more than usually. Now, imagine yourself riding a bike close to a stop sign. Usually you would take down your leg in order to not fall of the bike, because obviously on two wheels you are instable when you don’t drive. Okay, so you are there and your Corti organ tells you that you are out of balance and that you fall to the right hand side. The information goes from your ear to your brain in one second. There it gets analyzed, another second passed and finally your brain sent the signal to your right leg, that you had to put it down, the third second passed and you fell off your bike like a stone. No one could sit on a bike for around three seconds without doing anything.

Many things are based on a fast reaction. Without this we couldn’t drive; or even follow our normal routine. When I tell you now that our reaction is very slow, then you maybe will not believe me, but a fly is ten times faster than you. This is also the reason why you can not catch them. Because if you need around ½ second for catching them, it’s around five seconds for them, enough time to escape from your hand.

Now you see, we have quite a fast reaction time, but still there are faster ways to react than we are capable of. If we had the same reaction time as insects, we would need a smaller body or a lot more energy just for our reactions. Like almost everything is now in balance of our body.