In many science fiction movies (e.g. Matrix, Wanted, Spiderman, and Shinobi) there are scenes in which for superheroes time passes slower. Lots of times, what they do is similar to what their opponents do, except that they do it before enemy even think about it.
It seems that seeing others in slow-motion by heroes does not belong only to movies. When famous football player, Lionel Messi, plays football, you can hardly see anything from him which other players cannot do. Even worst, Cristiano Ronaldo is both stronger and faster than him. All Messi’s moves are investigated daily by best analyzers and advanced software. Coaches try to find ways to stop him and opponent players train hard and harder. Then why he is not stoppable really?
It seems the answer may be that opponents don’t have enough time to do what they have trained against him; because in Messi’s neural system time passes slower. In differential equations which model a single neuron (e.g. Hodgkin-Huxley model and Rose-Hindmarsh model) this speed can be generated by multiplying same constant terms (which should be greater than one) in all equations (it can be considered as time scaling). In this situation although the geometry of system’s trajectory doesn’t change, the time needed to pass it will decrease by increasing the multiplied term. The mentioned term can also be some state dependent (instead of constant) term which can give richer different patterns in time.
I have simulated the abovementioned discussions and the results are positive (although maybe obvious).
This term may be considered as the effect of some neurotransmitters (like dopamine) from biological viewpoint (I am not expert in that and it is just a saying!).
This slowing down of time shouldn’t necessarily be in the level of neurons. Interactions between neurons and the structure of neural circuits and networks may play this role. The problem of whether this can happen by learning and training, rather than by instinct, can be a good research topic for Joze Mourinho!
I have 2 questions:
1. What do you think about what I said? Is that interesting? Or trivial? Or even nonsense?
2. If interesting, does anybody want to collaborate on this topic? Someone expert in neuroscience?
Hello Mr Jafari, interesting conversation you have started. Regarding the part of your question, whether faster neural processing can be generated by speeding up the membrane dynamics (e.g. modeled by speeding up the HH-equations by changing the gate and membrane time constants). I think simply increasing the HH time constants is not very plausible, biophysically (I cannot think of any influences that do this, besides temperature, but I am not an expert on this part) and the answer should rather be sought in the emergent (network) properties of the brain, as the previous comments point to. Neuron properties such as excitability/resting potential and synaptic time constants/efficacies do contribute to these properties and are affected by substances like dopamine.
Alternatively, his decision/reaction time is faster than the average football player.
That would keep time being the same for everybody on Earth.
Not non-sense. You are on right track but let me rephrase it.
If you take response time of a normal player as base and consider relativity, you can say, his mind is seeing things at slow motion. But its just a statement. Reality is that, as mentioned above, his mind is computing faster and making decision with better output.
Details of it can be further discussed.
You can look at various other Mathematical models on Response Mechanism and Decision Making. Response time as function of various factors have been studied and published. Learning by doing also plays a role along with genetics.
Such research on animals has also been done.
There are many classified researches to increase the capabilities of soldiers too. Its just one of the application. I know you have seen such examples at least in movies.
As I said about Neural Pathways and Electric Current Transmission. As you get involved in one particular activity, the particular pathways of networks connecting various memory block related to an activity becomes better.
Like taking case of Lionel Mess's case, his neural network consisting of decision making part of brain, his memory blocks of his past experience in playing the matches, control system of his legs and head, sensory feedback from eyes and legs is quite developed. The legs responds faster as the decision is made faster and current is transferred to legs at faster rate due to better network structure between Brain and Legs.
His hands will not respond to hit the incoming ball to his face and his decision might be to use his head rather than hands to defend himself while a normal person might do it by his hands. You can even see this behavior among normal players.
We are talking of quite complex behavior which if explained to a layman will be difficult as they tend to run away from complexity. They need simple answer.
Simple answer will be - He has God Gift.
Of course his genetics might be better, but for heaven's sake don't give all the credit to God and genetics. He is not an alien.
He is what he is because of his hard work to increase the efficiency of all the above mentioned Neural Process and his fitness.
People should give more Credits to his Hard Work rather than God.
One truth is: theory of relativity suggests, when we are too fast, time stands still!!!!
Truly said. This is exactly the idea behind this and it explains the phenomenon to a layman in Simple Terms.
After all Research should be understandable to laymen so that people can be made interested towards research and hence more work on understanding the hidden dynamics of various systems.
This question and ensuing discussion has made people to look at the players from different perspective.
Thanks for all the nice answers. I like Harsh Kushwah answers.
I love football. My favorite team is Realmadrid and my favorite players are Raul Gonzalez and Ali Karimi. Unfortunately Messi is an enemy; but a lovely enemy I respect a lot.
However I asked this question from mathematical modeling point of view. I repeat that part of my question again:
“In differential equations which model a single neuron (e.g. Hodgkin-Huxley model and Rose-Hindmarsh model) this speed can be generated by multiplying same constant terms (which should be greater than one) in all equations (it can be considered as time scaling). In this situation although the geometry of system’s trajectory doesn’t change, the time needed to pass it will decrease by increasing the multiplied term. The mentioned term can also be some state dependent (instead of constant) term which can give richer different patterns in time.
I have simulated the abovementioned discussions and the results are positive (although maybe obvious).
This term may be considered as the effect of some neurotransmitters (like dopamine) from biological viewpoint (I am not expert in that and it is just a saying!).”
Any comment on that?
Its nothing you've said, actually..just a marvel and fancy.. lets talk.. movies are not real life forget science film makers depict imagination and that of lay artists.
Second, time does slow but in different geogalactic frames not on this earth, not in a person's.
Third, about matrix.. when you see Neo thrashing smith in all spatiooriented angles after visualising..its the depiction by the moviemaker to say that Neo is so quick in his observation that the normal human actions are quickly responded..means, the abilities are much faster means , brain is superfast.. there are human beings like this in some aspects.. slowing and quickenined brain does have reasons NT-neurotransmitters being one!!
matrix tries to reconstruct and present the ancient Indian concepts and the gist in some form of many texts-- in humanizez n story form. Tat depicts some if not all, cosmic processes.. like time travel or thought percolation and entry.. different physical forms or different physical forms of same body in different parts of unverse.. all of which has been already contemplated and discovered in ancient Indian i.e.Bharatiya texts.
and about Messi, the reason is n I say, this guy is ultra intelligent.. no not lab intelligent or Einstein iintelliget but motor-intelligent so he has multiple options for tackling one or multiple players.. I know how to manage him but, I wont like to share ..I love this lad and somehow Argentina is the team that I like after team India.
There is work on the "present moment" in the neuroscience literature: actually interest on both the length of the present moment, and on the neural underpinnings of it go back quite a way. For example, it's discussed in Stroud, J. M. (1967). The fine structure of psychological time. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 138(2), 623–631. But coming more up-to-date, there's some good papers discussing the duration and neural underpinnings in VanRullen, R., & Koch, C. (2003). Is perception discrete or continuous? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(5), 207–213. doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00095-0, and also in Wittmann, M. (2011). Moments in time. Frontiers in integrative neuroscience, 5, 66. doi:10.3389/fnint.2011.00066. I've tried to consider this with respect to artificial general intelligence in L.S. Smith, Perceptual time, perceptual reality and general intelligence, in Artificial General Intelligence, Proc of 5th International Conference, Oxford, December 2012, J. Bach, B. Goertzel and M. Ikle (editors), LNAI 7716, Springer, pp 292-301, 2012. (But actually, the Wittmann and Koch papers are better).
In essence, I think the answer to your question is that if the neurons were faster (i.e. neurons, neurotransmitters, synaptic conductances etc.) so the at beta and gamma oscillations of the cortical columns were faster, then , yes, the perceptual moment might be shorter, which would make perceptual time slow down., and enable the perceiver to see more of what was happening (by seeing more precepts per second, for example). Of course, the sensory systems too would need to work faster, to support this...
I think Leslie Smith is on the right track. More computations/sec would in essence give Messi's a "wider bandwidth" system for processing and responding to events on the pitch. This would promote detection of high frequency events (subtleties in ball or body motion for example) his opponents simply can not see since they are low pass filtered out. Of course the above analogy is restating what Leslie Smith pointed out in slightly different terminology. A key question from the neurobiological perspective is the origin of Messi's putative extra bandwidth: efficacy of synaptic transmission, faster neural conduction speeds, and/or a higher level process like an uncanny ability enter and stay "in the zone" and maintain focus during play? I wonder what a comparative genomic DNA screen might reveal? :-)
Hello Mr Jafari, interesting conversation you have started. Regarding the part of your question, whether faster neural processing can be generated by speeding up the membrane dynamics (e.g. modeled by speeding up the HH-equations by changing the gate and membrane time constants). I think simply increasing the HH time constants is not very plausible, biophysically (I cannot think of any influences that do this, besides temperature, but I am not an expert on this part) and the answer should rather be sought in the emergent (network) properties of the brain, as the previous comments point to. Neuron properties such as excitability/resting potential and synaptic time constants/efficacies do contribute to these properties and are affected by substances like dopamine.
Hi Sajad,
A simple answer: I think Messi has automatized more advanced motor skills than most other players, and that it frees up so much cognitive capacity that the effect may be that things seem to "move more slowly", or rather: that you have more time to think, perceive, make decisions. (Even just being able to "read the game" would help: If you already have a mental model of the positions of the other players, possible team mates you can pass the ball to, routes towards the goal, etc. you wouldn't have to spend so much time thinking about those things once you receive the ball. You already have a plan.) He is also small, with a low center of gravity, and extremely fast over short distanced, which helps a lot when dribbling in football. Finally, don't underestimate his physical capacities. Ronaldo is bigger, but Messi probably has very strong leg muscles and is generally probably very fit.
Thanks Lesli Sir, for such an informative posts and mentioning articles and keywords.
There is a drug recently launched to enhance the capabilities of the brain and increase the activating creative and logical part of brain together so that the person can make better and innovative decisions.
Featured in Digit Magazine, May2013 addition.
They have also talked about Military application along with Cons of these types of drugs
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