If you have taken a long trip, say an eight-hour flight from Paris to New York, you might have noticed that not all hours feel the same. The first hour is agonizingly slow because you are still quite alert. The next six hours pass more quickly and time goes faster and faster, as you get tired and become less alert. However, in the last hour, as you near your destination, excitement builds up and you become alert once again, and that last hour drags. Another example is a good night’s sleep of eight hours, which might sometimes feel like a few seconds. This is because, during sleep, EEG brainwaves are very slow, alertness and attention are mostly shut down, and sensory input to the brain is minimal, so the brain does not process or “record” much information. When you wake up, you recall very few mental snapshots of the whole night, which gives the impression that it only lasted for a few moments as if time flew, when you might have been actually sleeping for eight hours.
“The more alert we are, the slower time seems to run and vice versa”
We normally descend into sleep in several stages that repeat continuously, and are characterized by decreasing EEG brainwave frequencies. The brainwaves of 4–8 Hz dominate the first drowsy stage, followed by moderate-to-deep sleep, with brainwaves ranging from 2–4 Hz and, finally, the deepest sleep state which has the slowest brainwaves of 0.5–2 Hz, and from which it is very difficult to wake people up. The entire sequence usually takes about an hour and is called non-rapid eye movement sleep (non-REM). During these stages, brainwaves continue to slow down, alertness decreases, and so sleeping time passes very quickly. Once the deepest level of sleep is reached, the sequence reverses itself and brainwaves start to speed up to reach a state called the rapid eye movement sleep, or REM. In REM sleep, the EEG recordings are characterized by faster brainwaves (15–60 Hz) that are remarkably similar to those when we are fully alert and awake. This is when most dreams occur and the faster brainwaves in this stage are the reason why a one-minute dream sometimes feels like an hour to the dreamer. However, this REM state only lasts about 10 minutes and the brain cycles back into the non-REM sleep stages. Each night, we experience on average four cycles of REM sleep, each having longer and longer durations. The overall effect is that we wake up and feel like the whole night passed in an instant, except for the duration of a few dreams that seemed longer than usual.
The same effect is observed, but to a lesser extent, in daydreaming. When you allow your imagination to wander freely, you are no longer fully aware of what is going on around you, and you quickly lose track of time. During that state, the brainwaves’ frequency declines to the range of 3 to 8 Hz, where alertness is low and the brain’s “recording” speed is slow, causing time to fly. Daydreaming is probably the most popular way of speeding up time when one has to attend a boring meeting or sit through an uninspiring lesson at school!
People report a similar effect when under hypnosis. Hypnotized people are known to underestimate the duration for which they were under by as much as 40%. 46 The brain does not process much information under hypnosis, so 20 minutes might seem like just 12 minutes when it is time to wake up. However, sometimes people can be tricked into believing that time has been stretched. That is because hypnosis is very similar to the REM dream state, which resembles the waking state. In one experiment, hypnotized people were told to imagine that they were preparing a very complicated meal and had one hour to perform that task but, in reality, were only given 10 seconds. After those 10 seconds had elapsed in real world time, the hypnotized subjects were awakened and the reported experiencing intricate and accurate details in their inner perception that seemed like a full hour!
Moving further down the scale of alertness is the state of anesthesia. A general anesthetic that is given during surgery has an even more pronounced effect on time. The drug decreases the firing rate of brain neurons immensely and the brain’s processing speed approaches zero as the patient loses consciousness and is put into deep sleep. The brain’s “video camera” is essentially turned off. Anyone who has undergone surgery will tell you that when he or she woke up, it felt as though no time had passed at all. A similar situation occurs with people who go into a state of coma for years and wake up feeling that time has frozen, as if they were only gone for an instant. In such states, alertness is almost null, the brain’s information processing speed approaches zero, and the experienced speed of time runs extremely fast.
It is easy to see that as the levels of alertness drop, from fully awake to deep sleep, the brain’s information processing speed declines and, with it, time subjectively speeds up. Now what about situations where alertness levels increase? Let us look at some examples that slow down time.
The Oddball Effect
When we are fully awake, time runs at the normal speed we are used to during an average day. In such an awake state, when we are calm and relaxed, our brainwaves fluctuate in the range of 8 to 13 Hz. These are the strongest and most prominent electrical activities in the awake human brain and average 10 Hz, which is one cycle every 100 milliseconds. We already saw how that time interval is important to our perception of reality and normal experience of time. However, when we are engaged in focused mental activity, such as problem solving or decision making, we are usually more alert and the brainwaves speed up to the range of 13 to 38 Hz. This can go up to 70 Hz when we are hyper-alert, super focused, and processing information in different areas of the brain simultaneously. When we are in such a state, our brains absorb so much information each second, like the slo-mo high recording speed on a smartphone, that we feel time is running slowly. We saw in the beginning of this chapter how people that produce high frequency brainwaves, such as great athletes, artists, and thinkers, also tend to have high levels of intelligence, alertness, and a higher perception of reality, i.e. a higher sensitivity of hearing, vision, smell, and taste. Their brains are capable of processing large amounts of information in very short periods of time, as if time is running in slow motion.
Evidence for how an increase in alertness slows down the time experience comes from a well-known phenomenon called the “Oddball Effect.” This occurs when the brain experiences something unusual or out of the normal order of events, causing it to suddenly become more alert. It can be illustrated in a simple experiment. A person sitting in front of a computer screen is repeatedly shown an image of, say, a zebra for one second each time. After seeing the same zebra ten times, a novel “oddball” image of a flower is presented for the same duration of one second. The person is later asked how long the “oddball” flower image was shown, and most people would judge it to have lasted for longer than the repetitive zebra image, even though both lasted exactly one second. The main reason for this effect is that the brain pays special attention and spends more time processing odd events, recording as much information as possible about the novel circumstances. After observing the zebra image a few times, it starts to barely make an impression and the brain is no longer interested in processing any further information. But suddenly the “oddball” flower image appears, the brain becomes more alert, starts processing more information, and so is tricked into believing that it lasted longer than the repetitive images. 47 This boost in alertness directed at odd events leads to a feeling that time has slowed, but the only difference between the two is the alertness and degree of attention the brain has devoted to each image.
In another interesting study, researchers tested participants who attended an annual fair in Leuven, Belgium, to see how their mental arousal levels affected time experience during various roller coaster rides. The researchers chose four different rides with varying degrees of excitement and alertness, ranging from very calm to very active. They then asked the participants to estimate the duration of each ride. The results showed that those who took the most exciting and action-packed rides felt their duration to be longer than they actually were, as if time had slowed down. Whereas those who took the easy-going rides felt shorter ride durations, as if time flew. These findings indicate that action-packed rides cause an in
crease in the brain’s alertness level and information processing speed, which, as we saw, slows down the perceived speed of time. 48
Music, Alertness, and the Speed of Time
Listening intently to complex music can halt the flow of time altogether. This is because it involves anticipation, tracking what is going on in the song, and predicting what will come next. All these tasks require focused attention and higher information processing speeds, which stretches the experienced duration of listening to music. A couple of decades ago, psychologist Frances Rauscher and her colleagues made headlines by discovering that listening to Mozart can improve people’s mathematical skills and spatial reasoning. A two-year study of 1,200 children in Switzerland found that those who were given additional music lessons had better performance rates in language and social skills than those who were not. 49 Researchers also showed that even rats can run mazes faster after hearing Mozart! However, these “musical” effects are not limited to those mental functions but extend to time perception as well. It is now known that music, not just classical, raises our alertness levels by causing a large amount of dopamine neurotransmitters to be released inside the brain. Listening to music also significantly increases blood flow to the brain and reduces blood pressure. 50 This kind of aural stimulation excites the brain and causes it to process more information than usual. This was confirmed in a study from the Stanford University of Medicine, where people were given special headphones through which to listen to music while getting their brains scanned using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. The research team found that music caused certain areas in the brain responsible for attention, alertness, mental arousal, and planning, to light up. The boost in alertness results in faster thinking, which implies a fast ticking internal clock that stretches the experienced durations. It explains why listening to a nice song intently stretches its duration. 51
Music also hijacks our sense of time. It flows at a certain rhythm, creating a sequence of time units that do not typically align with our internal clock, thus distorting our experienced speed of time. This music time creates a parallel time reality that steals our connection to objective real time. Experiments have shown that just listening to fast repetitive sound clicks is enough to speed up our internal clock. The highly-structured and almost mathematical music of Mozart is perfect for this effect. 52 In 2004, the Royal Automobile Club Foundation for Motoring suggested that Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyrie,” is the most dangerous music to listen to while driving. The reason is not so much the distraction but the fact that Wagner’s furiously fast tempo challenges the driver’s normal sense of time, causing their internal clock to speed up and time intervals to stretch. The tendency to accelerate the car will then seem less risky, putting them in potentially life-threatening danger.
Another interesting study on the effect of music was conducted by marketing expert James Kellaris, who investigated the influence of music on waiting queues in shopping malls and consumer environments. He found that people who had enjoyed a nice piece of music, when asked to estimate its duration, felt it had lasted longer compared to music they did not like. 53 Marketing research has shown that people spend 38 percent more time in supermarkets when the background music is slow. It is also known that more drinks are sold in bars when slow tempo music is played. Moreover, Dr. Kellaris found that loud music created the illusion of slower time as well. 54 This is because louder music draws more attention and makes people more alert compared to softer music. The louder the song, the higher the mental arousal and the longer the song’s duration seems. This is important for restaurant operators, for instance, who know that the longer a customer has to wait for service, the less satisfied he will be. Consequently, if loud music is playing, it will expand the consumer’s perception of the time spent waiting and his negative experience will be amplified. Interestingly, this effect is more pronounced in females because they generally perceive music to be louder than males, due to their more sensitive hearing ability, particularly at the higher frequency range of 4,000 Hz and above. So now you understand why your wife tends to get irritated when a waiter delays serving your dinner; loud music playing in the restaurant background is probably the culprit!
Let us now look at some examples where the brain experiences a short burst of extreme alertness, and high processing power that can almost ‘freeze’ time; situations that make roller coaster rides look like a walk in the park.
Extreme Alertness: Experiencing “Bullet Time”
Imagine driving home after a long day at work when a car suddenly strays from its lane and comes straight at you on a direct collision path. Your alertness gets a sudden boost and your brain starts recording everything: every detail, every movement, every adjacent car, every thought, and every bit of information that might be useful for your survival. As a result, your brain processes a huge amount of mental snapshots in a very short period of time. In a normal situation, it would take a longer period of time to record the same amount of information. When you later recall those rich memories, you will feel that the event was longer, as if time was going in slow motion.
People involved in life-threatening situations often report time as having slowed down. When someone is involved in a seriously dangerous situation, they will experience extreme levels of fear that elevate their alertness to abnormal levels. A person standing at the side of the road observing a car crash accident would barely measure a fraction of a second for the whole incident, whereas the driver going through the crash will later recall it as passing in slow motion. He can often describe the tiniest details of the collision and would swear that the event was several seconds long as if “time stood still.” In movies, such as Kill Bill, action-packed scenes are often shown in slow motion “bullet time” to portray what the character is subjectively experiencing in those thrilling moments! In extreme cases, people on their death beds often report their whole life flashing before their eyes in a matter of seconds. It is possible that their brain goes into some kind of turbo hyper-alert mode in its final moments and time appears to slow down to the extent that an entire lifetime can be replayed once again in those last few seconds!
“People involved in life-threatening situations often report time as having slowed down”
The first detailed description of extreme life-threatening experiences comes from a distinguished late nineteenth century professor of geology named Albert von St. Gallen Heim. Heim had fallen while climbing in the Alps and experienced a near-death experience. Following this experience, he spent 25 years collecting numerous accounts of people who had had similar accidents, and lived to tell the tale. In interviews that he recorded in the 1892 Yearbook of the Swiss Alpine Club, he noted how around 95% of the climbers who had an accidental fall had experienced time in slow motion. 55 This was similar to his own experience in which “time became greatly expanded” as his body dropped towards the ground. All survivors mentioned experiencing a high level of alertness and clarity of mind, enabling them to react quickly in the face of danger. A 19-year-old climber reported, for instance, that during his fall, the fear and hope of survival “forced a concentration of my thoughts on rescue efforts and a redirection of my whole mind onto whatever might be necessary to prevent the potential plunge.” 56 Incidentally, Albert Heim also happened to be one of Albert Einstein’s professors, who might have possibly influenced Einstein’s thinking that time and space are not fixed and constant, but change with motion. Heim’s experience that “as an object hurtles through space, time is altered relative to motion and speed,” may have inspired Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Likewise, jet pilots who were ejected from their planes in the Vietnam War confirm similar experiences of time slowing down. In one interview, a jet pilot described: “when the nose-wheel strut collapsed I vividly recalled, in a matter of about three seconds, over a dozen actions necessary for successful recovery of flight altitude. The procedures I needed were readily available. I had almost total recall and felt in complete c
ontrol.” In another interview, a pilot recounts,
“as soon as we were airborne, the aircraft started to roll to the left. Time was expanded greatly, so it felt like several minutes before it was time to get out . . . I assumed ejection posture and pulled the lower handle. Again, there was time expansion. The canopy leaving, the seat going up the rail, and the aircraft disappearing below me seemed to take several minutes. Only a few seconds later, my feet hit the ground . . . Just as immediate, I was surrounded by people asking how I was, and the one-and-a-half-minute ordeal that took ten minutes was over.”
In similar interviews, a 14-year-old boy who had accidentally shot himself in the chest reported that his “thoughts were speeded up and time seemed stretched out.” 55
The common aspects often reported in these dangerous situations are mental quickness and increased speed of thought, unusually sharp vision or hearing, high level of alertness, and intense focus on survival. Almost all people report a feeling that time slowed down to a great extent, resulting in the perception that the event lasted longer than it actually did. A faster information processing speed means the internal clock speeds up, and the flow of time is slower, thus giving the person more time to plan their next move. Another key ingredient in those life-threatening situations is the element of surprise. This is evident from hospital patients who are similarly facing life-threatening terminal illnesses, yet do not experience an increased speed of thought or enhanced alertness. Nor do they experience a slowing of the speed of time.
The Power of Time Perception Page 9