Albert AlcaineWho doesn’t remember those eternal summers of our childhood that seemed to have no end? Those summer holidays that lasted forever and the waiting time between Christmas and summer was eternal? On the other hand, can anyone tell me why, when we get older, time flies by and the weeks, months and seasons disappear from the calendar at a dizzying pace?
The pace of adult life, often full of responsibilities and worries, distorts our perception of time, causing us to lead stress-filled lives . There is speculation that the brain’s internal clock (which is different from the circadian clock that controls daily cycles of activity) slows down as we age and, as a result, the pace of life seems to speed up.
The malfunctioning of this clock could explain diseases such as dyslexia, hyperactivity, Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia… Also why in a car accident, three seconds can seem like three minutes, why older people in nursing homes are often confused about time and even how some drugs such as cocaine and amphetamine give the sensation of “speed” while others, including marijuana, subjectively slow down the passage of time?
As we grow older, brain cells that produce a neurotransmitter called dopamine begin to deteriorate in the basal ganglia and substantia nigra, the brain regions known to be involved in the internal clock. The release of dopamine during the perception of new stimuli helps us measure time , and in our twenties, levels begin to progressively decline, making time seem to go faster.
There are several theories about the perception of time: the gradual alteration of our internal clock , the slowing down of our metabolism (which is synchronised with the slowing down of our heart rate and breathing)…
A child’s heart beats harder, which is why the number of beats and breaths is higher, making it seem like more time has passed.
Hudson Hoagland noticed in 1930 that when his wife had a high fever, she complained that she had been out of the room for a long time, when in fact she had only been out for a few moments . Curious, he asked his wife to calculate when a minute had passed, and after only 37 seconds she said the time was up. As his temperature increased, he counted faster. Subsequent experiments determined that applying heat to a person’s brain could delay the sensation of time by 20% and that reducing a person’s body temperature by two or three degrees could speed up the subjective sensation of time .
Another theory suggests that the key lies in the way we perceive the new information we absorb : if we have plenty of new stimuli, the brain needs more time to process – and would explain the “slow-motion perception” of events just before an accident.
Perhaps when confronted with new situations, our brains register memories in greater detail, which is why the reconstruction of the events seems slower than the event itself – in fact, this has been demonstrated in experiments with people who have been exposed to a free fall!
How do you explain the fact that time is passing faster and faster as we get older?
The theory suggests that the older we get, the more we become accustomed to our environment and no longer notice the details of our surroundings. For children, on the other hand, the world is an unexplored place, full of possibilities, and so they need to put more effort into rewiring their brains to reconfigure their mental ideas about the outside world.
None of these theories, however, match the almost mathematical and continuous rate of acceleration of time, suggesting a logarithmic rather than linear scale , as is the case when measuring earthquakes or sound.
What sense does it make that the perception of time follows a logarithmic scale?
Let’s be positive: time flies, whether you are having a good time or not, and it flies faster every day.
📎 Alcaine, A. [Albert]. (2024, 03 August). The speed of time. PsicoPop. https://www.psicopop.top/en/the-speed-of-time/
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