[benzor]

Interesting factoid: the human brain processes sound faster that sight [1]. The difference cited in the paper below is roughly 40 ms, which is small in an absolute sense, but compared to the relative time tolerances we are discussing here in this parent article, it's huge!

Naturally this effect cancels out if all competitors get the same visual cue, however it's still to the benefit of athletes and fans to want quicker reaction times:

- Shorter overall reaction times means faster races means better records

- The standard deviation of reaction times is smaller for sound than for sight, which means the reaction time is more fair to all

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4456887/

[mattkrause]

Vision is amazingly sluggish. Turning an incoming photon into a nerve impulse involves a whole mess of slow (and fascinating) chemistry, just to leave the rod or code. Once it does that, the resulting signal bounces around the retina and then a huge portion of the brain before it's available for "action."

The auditory system, on the other hand, is optimized for speed. It has a giant synapse (=connections between cells), called the Calyx of Held, that is specialized for extremely fast (sub-millisecond), reliable transmission between cells. They're really cool looking: https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/213595.php?from=44...