Blinking = missing 10% of the movie

A scientific study shows that spectators who blink during a movie -­ that's everyone -­ miss 10% of it. The good news: humans instinctively know when to blink so as not to miss the plot.

Led by Professor Tamani Nakano of the University of Tokyo, the study proves that each blink lasts about 450 milliseconds, amounting to 6 lost seconds for each minute of film or TV show – in other words, 10%. Nakano and his team based their study on results from volunteers, who watched a silent comedy and footage of an aquarium with no plot several times, frame by frame.

It came out that while watching the movie, all participants instinctively blinked around the same time, as their brains processed the right moment to moisten the surface of their eyeball with lachrymal liquid: in other words, the right moment when not much was happening or when the protagonist was not onscreen, so they wouldn't miss much of the plot. On the other hand, while watching the plotless footage of the aquarium, the viewers all blinked at their own rhythm.

This reinforces the hypotheses of other studies, which found an audience's brain activity can synchronize during the viewing of a movie.