Over the years, the moments begin to whistle just like bullets at the temple
How quickly time flies! Surprisingly, this is by no means a figurative - old man's - expression. Elderly people really think so: they didn’t have time to look around, but it’s winter again.
Brazilian scientists were convinced that the perception of time changes over the years. They recruited several hundred volunteers, ages 15 to 89, and asked them to count 120 seconds in their heads.
The subjects, who were between 15 and 29 years old, counted 120 seconds for an average of 115 seconds. In a group that included people from 30 to 49 years old, 120 seconds passed in 96 seconds. And for those over 50, they flew in 86 seconds. The difference between the assessments of the young and the elderly is almost 25 percent. Consequently, for old people an hour lasts 45 minutes, a month - 3 weeks, and a year - 9 months.
The results were at odds with those of other researchers. For others, it turned out that time accelerated and flew by unnoticed for those whose brains were heavily loaded - it was necessary to solve several problems simultaneously. And for those who concentrated on the flow of time - followed the passing moments - on the contrary, it stretched out.
The Brazilians did not understand the reasons for the discovered phenomenon. They only assumed that the elderly, realizing that life was not eternal, subconsciously rushed in everyone everywhere. Even counting down the seconds.
By the way, scientists from the University of Pennsylvania conducted similar experiments several years ago, creating conditions for time dilation.
The experimenters collected two groups - 20 smokers and 22 nonsmokers. And they were asked to estimate how long it will take from the moment they hear the word “started” to the command “stop”. Initially, both groups showed approximately the same results. But after a day of abstinence, according to most smokers, the time interval became much longer. Although it lasted the same 45 seconds. It turned out that on average, the length of time in their perception increased by about 50 percent.
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Lords of time
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Internal timing
Of course, we have some kind of clock inside. "On a large scale" the body counts the so-called circadian rhythms - periods of sleep and wakefulness within a day. It also measures very tiny - millisecond intervals necessary for the implementation of motor functions. That is, movements.
“The biological basis of these processes is more or less clear,” says John Wyrden of the University of Staffordshire (England). - But no one has yet fully figured out the clock that counts the seconds and minutes for the body. Those that just allow us to feel the passage of time. It is only recently that areas in the brain have been found that specialize in such timing. But there is no unanimous opinion about how the mechanism itself works.
Some consider a reasonable model, which assumes the existence of a certain "pacemaker" - one device, which is similar, in fact, to a pacemaker. Like, it emits impulses, the sequence of which is recorded in a special storage device - as if on a tape. And estimating how long it took to wait, say, a bus, watch the boiling kettle, count the seconds in our mind, we “scroll” this tape every time.
Others believe the mechanism is much more complex. And not just one, but several parts of the brain are involved in timing. In other words, the internal clock is large - almost for the whole head. Computed tomograms allegedly testify to this.
A kind of "pendulum" seems to be located in a part of the brain called the striatum. And the "gears" and "arrows", which it affects, seem to be crammed along the frontal lobes. They are responsible for our actions themselves, and for preparing for them, for attention, memory, even emotions, while generating waves of electrical activity. They, in turn, again fall on the striatum. As a result of such a process - "back and forth", perhaps, the time goes by. It is possible that under certain conditions, the "pendulum" affects the "gears with arrows" - transfers them. Or vice versa, they sometimes slow down, then accelerate the "pendulum". And thereby distort the perception.