In a study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, scientists identified channels of neurons that adapt to perceive certain lengths of time. The researchers exposed study subjects to a series of beeps and flashes of the same duration. When they increased the duration just slightly, the subjects perceived that the signals were way longer than they actually were.
When the beeps and flashes were significantly longer, the subjects were better at predicting the duration.
The study seems to reinforce the idea that expectations often lead to disappointment and frustration. It does not, however, explain why an hour-long massage always seems too short.
Along those lines, a researcher named David Eagleman looks at how to slow time down when it feels like the days are flying by too fast. One suggestion: keep new experiences in your life. Familiar information is easy for our brains to process, and the harder we make our brains work the slower time seems to pass.
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Tim H
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 1:30 PMThis explains why when I watch a movie a second time, the boring bits seem to take forever, because I’m expecting all the good bits.
Matt L
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 2:43 PMHmmm… If the brain creates a new neuron link for each new memory. Then it needs to create more links for more and more new experiences… You’re brain is burning more energy and gives you a lot more to process, therefor, as we recently learned the brain is NOT a parallel processor so much as a serial processor. This seems quicker in our head then it actually does because our “awareness of time” side of the brain get’s dumbed down to allow more energy focused on processing the new information, so it seems to go quicker…. When we’re not learning new information, our brain is processing old information, over and over again. This is boring, even for our brain… I wonder what effect living in a world without music and clocks or anything else which is kept “In time” would be like… Watching a dripping tap can be insanely boring, but there’s a continual rhythm going on, for the first few drops that rhythm is being learned, then by the time your brain realizes nothings going to change in this situation, it becomes extremely dull and boring to watch… Certainly does not help time go by quicker.