Each heartbeat creates a blip of neural activity in the brain, and that blip may help people better sense their world.
People were more likely to spot a flash of a hard-to-see ring when the image was presented right after a heartbeat, researchers report March 9 in Nature Neuroscience. The neural jolt produced by a heartbeat primes the brain to better detect the ring.
The results are an example of how bodily functions can have a big effect on the brain.
