Synchronized blinking during moviesJUL 29 2009

Due to blinking, viewers of a 2.5 hour-long film like the latest Harry Potter will have their eyes shut for up to 15 minutes. But researchers have found that movie goers synchronize their blinks:

The synchronised blinks occurred at "non-critical" points during the silent movie -- at the conclusion of an action sequence or when the main character had disappeared from view. "We all commonly find implicit breaks for blinking while viewing a video story," Nakano says.

In In the Blink of an Eye, film editor Walter Murch wrote about the blink as a natural place to cut between scenes, a marker of the boundary between two ideas.