Your brain predicts the future by about 15 milliseconds to compensate for processing delays.

The human brain does not perceive reality in real-time because sensory processing is surprisingly slow. It takes approximately 50 to 100 milliseconds for the brain to process visual information after light hits the retina. To prevent us from living in the past, the brain uses a mechanism called predictive coding to anticipate motion and visual changes.Research led by Dr. Gerrit Maus at the University of California, Berkeley, and published in the journal 'Nature Communications' in 2013, highlights how the brain compensates for these delays. The study found that the visual system pushes moving objects forward in our perception. This shift allows us to interact with the world as it is happening rather than where it was a fraction of a second ago.This phenomenon is often demonstrated through the 'flash-lag illusion,' where a flash of light appears misaligned with a moving object even when they are physically in the same spot. The brain essentially 'hallucinates' the future position of the moving object to bridge the gap caused by neural transmission speeds. Without this 15-millisecond adjustment, tasks like catching a ball or driving a car would be nearly impossible due to the lack of synchronization between our vision and physical reality.