Human reaction time what are the limits of it?

I think the reaction time question was settled a few years ago by the late Joe "Fast Thumbs" McGurk. McGurk was in practice of seeing how fast he could honk his supercharged air horns after a spotlight changed from red to green. His record, set just before his untimely demise when he was behind the car of, Alfie "Bad Attitude" Swanson, is 0.01 seconds.

Rap

I think if anyone goes off - breaks the line - in an Olympic 100 metres race - within 0.09 seconds of the firing gun its treated as a false start - and the human body can't move or react that fast.

A blink is probably the fastest human reaction - maybe 1/10 of a second. I would guess the hard floor is around 1/20th of a second to perceive and start responding to external stimulus. I think the world's fastest gun - could respond to an external signal - draw and fire a gun in about 22 hundredths of a second.

I think fast, but move faster.

If you're going to get into MMA, you better get yourself a hefty supply of Vitamin S.

I heard that it depended upon how pissed you are.

OK, I gotta agree with Spendi, Gad help me.

Don't forget time of day.

And post coital euphoria can be a drag.

Theoretically, the impulses could move at the speed of light, but they don't. Nerves are designed very specifically. They have "pores" of sorts along their length. They work off of an osmotic electrical principal whereby electrons move in a cycle in and out of those pores. It works much like a jacob's ladder, or dominoes falling over. The nerve transmits an electrical impulse which causes a polarity reversal along the length of a nerve cell at each of those pores. Then that impulse is transferred to the next nerve where the process starts over again. Until the input traverses the length of all the nerves and comes back again, it can take a bit of time.

Some nerves don't actually directly connect to the brain. Take these two examples: burning your hand on a pan, and having a doctor test your knee-jerk reflex. The hand burning on a pan requires that the impulse be sent to your brain, processed, then sent back to the hand as pain. That is why it seems like it takes a moment to realize you're being burned. The knee jerk reflex doesn't require cranial input, it simply responds directly which is why its much faster.

Improving your reaction time is more a function of genetics and health. I think you'd find that if you removed gluten, dairy, and eggs from your diet, your reaction time might improve noticably. For instance, being drunk is a perfect example. Alcohol affects your motor skills because it is killing brain cells. The brain has to find new pathways to execute the desired result. In effect, it lengthens the amount of time your impulses spend being processed in the brain, and then the resulting signal might be delayed, poorly directed, or just downright funny.

Alcohol kills brain cells?

I set an all-time record for amount of brain cells killed last night.

What's the delay from deep cleavage in the pub to the first reflex twitch.

An experiment at USAF showed it to be much shorter than recognising a MIG 18 at 12 o'clock.

The hand on the pan does need brain input. Its simply that your brain and hands have such constant communication that the pathways are heavily trained and much quicker than you think. Burning on the sensory nerves is totally a cognitive function. If you're cooking on a hot stove and someone comes up behind you and puts an ice cube on your neck, your nerves send a cold impulse to your brain, but your brain often misinterprets it as heat and responds as if you're being burned.

It is also evident because when you touch a pan, it takes a brief time to process the heat. That is why we tap on things we think are hot. We test the waters by touching it quickly. The heat transfers at the same rate, but a quick touch requires the brain to process it. If you simply grab the pan to see if its hot, you'll fry your hand before your brain processes it and decides to pull away.

The gunshot also requires brain function, but a well-trained and experienced racer has trained his or her brain to fast-track those impulses.

The five senses all require brain function. Reflexes don't. If you have a recently deceased cadaver and burn it with a hot pan, it doesn't react. If you smack its knee with a hammer, the knee still jerks.

Well, I will admit that I'm not willing to test my hypothesis with my own hand just to prove a point, so perhaps I just have to concede the point.

curtis wrote-



What happens if you tickle its nipples tastefully?

Does it start demanding things?

You should at least buy it dinner first

I just wanted to know because my fastest reaction time is 0.014 seconds and I wanted to know just how good that was

Don't apply to be an England Test Match batsman.