In the course of growing up, almost every person has the feeling that the passage of time is greatly accelerating - it would seem that he has only recently woken up, and it is time to go to bed. Over the years, scientists have tried to identify the cause of this phenomenon, and a new hypothesis put forward by researchers at Duke University seems to be the most realistic. It says that the feeling of accelerated time is associated with changes in the functioning of the aging brain, namely in the speed of information processing and the number of visual images received.
Previously, it was already known that changes in the sense of time are associated with the fact that an adult pays less attention to the surrounding events due to the fact that they are already familiar to him - for him time passes quickly. Children, in turn, are interested in all events, and their brain processes much more information - accordingly, for them time seems to flow much more slowly.
A group of scientists led by Professor Adrian Bedzhan decided to dig deeper and found that children receive much more visual information than adults. They proved this by comparing the frequency of eye movements of people over the years. It turned out that children's eyes "run" very often, and their young minds process large amounts of visual data, and very quickly.
The delayed processing of data in adults is due to the fact that over the years, the plexus of neurons in their brains become more complex and become longer. Consequently, the signals take longer to travel than before. Thus, it may seem to people that their childhood up to 10 years lasted an extremely long time, while adult life moves at lightning speed.
Have you noticed that life progresses faster with age?
Ramis Ganiev
