Finger tapping allows the human brain to see things that are normally invisible due to a biological blind spot.

Rhythmic physical movements can override the attentional blink, a bottleneck where the brain misses a second image shown quickly after the first. Most cognitive scientists believe this blink is a hard limit of human perception. Simple motor rhythms act as a biological hack to synchronize attention and keep the sensory gates open. This discovery implies that fidgeting or rhythmic movement might actually improve situational awareness in high-stress environments. People might perform better on visual monitoring tasks if they are allowed to tap their feet or drum their fingers.