Perception of time

One night while driving back home from work I suddenly saw a car that had broken down and lay in the middle of the road without any tail lights on. I was considerably fast and didn’t notice it. Then, suddenly I realized that everything around me seemed to have gone out of focus and my brain only emphasized on the stationary car and the road which became my center of focus. Then, as if magically (almost subconsciously) I maneuvered my car slightly towards left and missed a dreadful collision. In hindsight I can still remember extremely vividly the event taking place in slow motion, As if I were in a movie which had slowed down and the protagonist now had enough time to doge a bullet (somebody like Neo). Now why events like this one in hindsight seem to last longer than it actually did? I did some rough calculations and the time for the sensor signals to reach the brain and back to the motor nerves to react for maneuvering was not more than 300 Milli second! Yet the whole event seemed to have taken forever (relatively speaking). Time seemed to have slowed down for me somehow, or so it seemed to at least in hindsight. I still remember everything in great detail. How is it possible? How can we suddenly from autopilot go into this ninja mode where we perceive things at slow motion? OR DO WE? 

We all have watches around that tell us that time is ticking forward steadily and predictably, whereas our experiences tell us it is anything but. Time or perception of time can be compressed and stretched likes a bubble gum. Time, my friends is indeed warped!

For example, the next time you have a fever, try this experiment: Count till 60 seconds without a watch and when you think its time, shout out loud! At the same time, have someone sitting next to you with a stopwatch measuring exactly 60 seconds, you will be bewildered that your estimate will be consistently shorter ( ~ 45 seconds). The higher your temperature the lower will be the estimate, somehow your mind speeds up your perception of time as your heart rate increases. Like a racing engine, the hotter it is the faster it goes (Well almost every engine except Fiat!).

Like any other scientific finding, this one too raises further question. Namely: do animals that have a faster heartbeat, like mice perceive time faster than us? What about hummingbirds and Honey bees? Do they see the world in slow motion compared to us? Ever wondered why you always miss a hitting a fly with a swatter? Maybe it perceives time faster than you do!

But the million dollar question here is: what are the neural mechanisms of time perception? Interestingly unlike other senses: touch, taste, smell and hear, there is no one single region dedicated to the sense of time, it seems to be meta sensory. Isn’t that incredible? It is nowhere yet everywhere…

Do you know that you have the ability to both; slow down or enhance the speed of time yourself?
Prof. David Eagleman put people in situations where they could slow their time. He placed participants 15 stories above the ground and hung them using a rope, later he released them from there to perceive a feeling of free fall/weightlessness for 3 or more seconds before they landed safely ( in a net). The interesting bit here was that asked the participants to report the time they were in free fall and the participants always overestimated. Seeing things in slow motion and high detail. The duration of the event does not change but the event seems to have taken longer only in RETROSPECT!
Then might it have something to do with the memory of the event? Because your memories are more densely packed you seem to recall them in high detail.

This is the most marvelous and mind blowing link here, the one between Time and Memory! Time to your brain it turns out is nothing but the detail with which you register a memory. During critical situations, the region of the brain called amygdala kicks in and forges the memory in a very high detail (In the hippocampus) and makes them stick together. And since emotional memories are much stronger than normal memories, upon replay of these events the high detail memories might make the event seem to last longer. Hence, the more detailed a memory the longer the event seems to have lasted! So when you take drugs like psilocybin the sense of time is reduced because you are processing much more information than normal conditions. The amount of dopamine in the brain shoots up and you lose the sense of time. Mostly it slows down!

Ever wondered why vacation feels like it whizzed pass very early, but seems to last longer in hindsight? this contradictory feeling is termed as ‘holiday paradox’. That is because we perceive time prospectively and retrospectively. They are usually in sync during our daily lives, of waking up, working, sleeping and weekends. But on vacations the stimulus from sights, experiences etc. brings a sense of novelty and leads to misalign of the two warping the perceived time.

All of that is ok, But I am sure that like me all the people out there feel as if the time is passing very fast as we age. It also seems to be moving slower while we were kids. According to one of the hypothesis that is because as one grows older, one gathers more and more memories and many of them are not in high detail and are hence compressed representations of events. So when you recall these memories, they are somewhat depleted, giving a faster representation of time! (it is faster to go through a thinner book than a thick one). One of the most important things for a brain is energy, brains are always predicting things using approximation and previous knowledge so in the end if you have used more energy that replicates to using more neural activity it seems to be lasting longer. And that is exactly what happens when you’re in a fearful situation. The interesting thing to ask here is there a control center for this? if yes, then where and what type of neurons or activity of neurons corresponds to such a behavior.

The next obvious question on might ask is, are there any diseases which might be linked to an error in the perception of time in the brain? According to this enthralling hypothesis by one scientist, yes there are! Schizophrenia for example is described as the disease of hearing voices in the brain, or having someone in your brain that is not you. Now imagine if that person was actually you but in the past. This is called ‘misattribution of credit’ for example you say I moved my leg but it wasn’t me. This is because of the brain signal being perceived later than it actually occurred. These two things are not in sync which makes you misattribute the signal as not your own doing. It is also noticed that these people have abnormal levels of dopamine. This causes them to Miss Judge the duration of an event when measured via other experiments.

Another related psychological phenomenon is that of being in the zone or in a state of flow. For example the book ‘drive’ the author argues that we seem to lose track of time when we are doing something with a lot of concentration, hours seems to be like minutes which actually makes us slow time down. Different types of music have the same effect. BPM (beats per minute) decide if you will perceive time faster or slower. The perception of time in the brain is distortable and can be manipulated by music.

So how can you slow time down as you grow? Here are my two cents:

Do new things, have new experiences, if you never tried an instrument do it, take a new path to work today, change the settings of your room, it is known that our brain has maps for things we do very often and they get strengthened as we do them regularly. After a while they become a part of our automatic system. That’s when you lose track of time. It’s like driving home automatically without even consciously realizing it. Music is one big factor too. Just like listening to vivaldi (or pink floyd) will slower your perception of time, listening to Nirvana will make it faster.

Since memories are a guide to our perception of time, having new memories in a shorter time will help us in perceiving that the time has gone by much slowly. A weekend for example with multiple new activities but each one having enough detail for example painting a wall, photographing etc. Surprising yourself with new things keeps your brain engaged, and uses more energy, new connection are forged. Attention is the key here. So either that or you travel near the speed of light where you will be moving so fast that you will experiences everything around you still and not moving at all. Moreover, Novelty seem to have a very strong impact on memory. You are more likely to remember things that are distinctive and vivid, and personally involving (Like a vacation! like travelling to space also is known to decrease the perception of time). 

Meditate often! Meditation combined with deep breathing has been shown to be lowering the heart rate which further decreases the amount of activity in the brain and makes you feel lighter. In certain deep modes of meditation one can even completely lose track of time. But the key is to let go. Have a timer or alarm to bring you back but quieten your surroundings and go deep within your mind.

Einstein once famously said: “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute — and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity."

Time indeed is relative and is immortal; it appeared with the beginning of the universe and will remain till its end. We all are bound by time. It’s the only thing that never stops, is never the same and always moves in a single direction. Time is baffling and that’s what makes it so much fun to study. So the next time you’re feeling the time is passing by too fast, stop, and do something novel. It is famously said in the Vedas: the ones who do not learn to change with time, time changes them.

Stay Curious!
Stay Inspired!

J