Why Your Perception of Time Can Change

People often say that time flies when you’re having fun, but does it really? What’s the science behind our perception of time? We’re sad to say this is Julia’s last episode. Thanks for helping make DNews awesome for the last year! Julia’s Twitter (@Julia_SCI) ►►►►****** Julia’s Tumblr ►►►►****** Sign Up For The TestTube Newsletter Here ►►►► ****** Read More: The Neural Substrates of Subjective Time Dilation ****** “We performed an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, while subjects viewed a stream of five visual events, all of which were static and of identical duration except the fourth one, which was a deviant target consisting of either a looming or a receding disc.” Is subjective duration a signature of coding efficiency? ****** “We suggest that such duration illusions appear to parallel the neural phenomenon of repetition suppression, and we marshal evidence for a new hypothesis: the experience of duration is a signature of the amount of energy expended in representing a stimulus, i.e. the coding efficiency. This novel hypothesis offers a unified explanation for almost a dozen illusions in the literature in which subjective duration is modulated by properties of the stimulus such as size, brightness, motion and rate of flicker.” Does Time Really Slow Down during a Frightening Event? ****** “Observers commonly report that time seems to have moved in slow motion during a life-threatening event. It is unknown whether this is a function of increased time resolution during the event, or instead an illusion of remembering an emotionally salient event. Using a hand-held device to measure speed of visual perception, participants experienced free fall for 31 m before landing safely in a net.” Aging and the speed of time ****** “Correlational and experimental methods provide evidence relevant to seven theories of humans’ general impressions of the speed of time, including theories of the purported subjective acceleration of time with aging. A total of 1865 adults from two countries, ranging in age from 16 to 80, reported how fast time appears to pass over different spans of time.” ____________________ DNews is dedicated to satisfying your curiosity and to bringing you mind-bending stories & perspectives you won't find anywhere else! New videos twice daily. Watch More DNews on TestTube ****** Subscribe now! ****** DNews on Twitter ****** Trace Dominguez on Twitter ****** Julia Wilde on Twitter ****** DNews on Facebook ****** DNews on Google ****** Discovery News ****** Download the TestTube App: ****** Sign Up For The TestTube Mailing List: ******

Time flies when you’re having fun! But time is a constant right? So, why does it feel like it goes at different speeds? Hey guys Julia here for the last time Fascinating research into time reveals just our fluid our sense of time really is. Ever been in a car accident and it seemed to unfold in slow motion? Well a study published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience found that we feel like time slows down when an object is coming toward us and time speeds up when it’s not moving or moving away from us. The researchers believe this has to do with threat perception. Parts of your brain fire that handle how we think about ourselves in relation to what’s going on around us. So when something comes towards us, we need to plan what to do. If something moves away from us, that might makes us relax, as it’s no longer a threat. Time slowing down or speeding up is really all in your head. Another study published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences found that time slows down if the stimulus is novel. The researchers think this could be because you’re taking in more information at once than you normally do. So if something new is heading right towards you, time might feel like it slows wayyyy down. And you don’t have to wait for a life threatening situation to experience time slowing down. One study published in the journal PLOS one found that purposely falling 15 stories does the trick. The researchers had test subjects bungee jump 15 stories and estimate how long they had been falling for. The terrified participants said they fell for about 4 seconds when really it was only 2.5. And to test the idea that the slowing of time perception happens because our brain is taking in more information -- like a slower computer churning through data -- the researchers gave the participants watches that flashed numbers faster than they'd be able to read under normal circumstances… They figured, if they were sucking in all this info, then they would read the numbers on the watch face, but as the participants fell, they still couldn’t do it. So time didn’t reeeaaallly slow down for them. It seemed slower in retrospect because of the emotional charge of the situation. But time seems to speed up too. Most of the time shifting we experience happens when we get older. We settle into routines and every day just becomes a familiar blur of work and stress. Some researchers believe time picks up speed as we age because each moment becomes a smaller percentage of our lives. When we’re 10, a year is a tenth of our lives, when we’re thirty, it's only 1/30th. This ‘proportional' theory, as it’s called, was put forth in 1877 by Paul Janet. But it doesn’t explain everything. Studies like one published in the journal Acta Psychologica found that time doesn’t actually speed up for older people. When they are asked out count off a minute, they don’t do it any faster than a younger person. Or when asked about how long the past month felt to them, there wasn’t much difference between people of different ages. So our perception doesn’t change as we get older. Our memory of time does. The researchers proposed that novel experiences are the most memorable and as we get older, we have fewer novel experiences. They also point to a phenomenon called 'forward telescoping'. This where you think something memorable feels like it happened only yesterday, when really it was TWENTY years ago, like when Toy Story hit theaters… . Basically memorable events are clearer in our memories than less memorable ones, so we wrongfully assume they happened more recently. Once you realize your error, man do you feel old. Speaking of time flying by. It seems like just yesterday I joined DNews for the first time. But really it was over a year ago! But now it’s time to say goodbye. While I’m saying goodbye to DNews, I’ll still be around on the internet. Come find me on my Tumblr, That’s So Science and on twitter @julia_sci. Thank you so much for being the best fans and for all your thoughtful comments! Got any other science questions for the DNews team? Thanks for watching DNews. I’ll see you around.