Berkeley Researchers Find How Pablo Sandoval Can Hit 95 MPH Pitch

If Giants' slugger Pablo Sandoval used only his eyes to see where the fastballs are going to be, he'd probably strike out a lot more often.

That's the conclusion drawn from a study by UC Berkeley vision scientists that found the mind's eye is faster than the actual eye.

The results pinpoint for the first time "how the brain tracks fast-moving objects," according to a campus news release Wednesday.

The brain somehow has to not only catch up with the eye, which after all, gets first whack at images, but then has to make up for the lost time by jumping ahead. It takes about a tenth of a second for the brain to process what the actual eye sees, according to the release.

"If our brains couldn’t make up for this visual processing delay, we’d be constantly hit by balls, cars and more," the campus said. "Thankfully, the brain 'pushes' forward moving objects so we perceive them as further along in their trajectory than the eye can see, researchers said."

Gerrit Maus, a postdoc in psychology at Cal and lead author of the paper published Wednesday in the journal Neuron was quoted as saying, "For the first time, we can see this sophisticated prediction mechanism at work in the human brain.”

Maus and fellow researchers used functional MRI scanning on six volunteers to locate the brain's ace predictor neurons. They were found in the region known as V5.

The findings are expected to have an impact on studies of the brain and complement the Obama Administration's Brain Activity Map Initiative, the campus said.

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