Theory about time perception

Time is different for everybody. Sometimes it is slower or faster. When we are excited it moves fast and when we fear it is just as slow as a snail.

If you are waiting and you watch the clock all the time, you will see that time is just way too slow. Psychedelic substances also slow time. But it can be explained by the information flowing all around you. When you are on a psychedelic substance (but I will talk more about psychedelics in another post) you are being bombarded with information and your mind just slows the time so you can gather all of it. That is my theory. Also with fear. If you have a life-threatening experience it can feel like forever. This is because your brain goes on your subconscious mind to find a similar scenario to this life-threatening one and to figure out what to do. This takes time and that is why some people feel like their life just showed like a film in front of their eyes.

But this is altered through our mind. The mind slows time, based on what we feel. But now let's talk about base time. How do we feel our base time which then goes to the brain and gets changed or it just gets registered? You probably have woken up just before your alarm clock and wondered how the fuck did this happen? Well, we have a base time which I think can also change and change the perception of our time. I think it is linked with our heartbeat. If we have a slower heartbeat we fell time slower, when being fast we feel time moving faster. The heartbeat can explain our internal clock. Our heartbeat is a measure of time.

I thought about this theory and started searching the web for some researches on the topic. There were not so many but I found something. So firstly I found this article:

People who are more aware of their own heart-beat have superior time perception skills

In the article, we see that there was a test which is supposed to determine if the heartbeat is linked with our perception of time:

Thirty-one participants listened to auditory tones of either 8, 14, or 20 seconds duration. After each one, they heard a second tone and had to press a button when they thought its duration matched the first. Counting was forbidden during the task and a secondary, number-based memory task helped enforce this rule. Heart-beat perception accuracy was measured separately and simply involved participants counting silently their own heart-beats over periods of 25, 35, 45 and 60 seconds.

The conclusion of the test was that:

The take away message is that the participants who were more in tune with their heart-beats also tended to perform better at the time estimation task.

‘These results suggest that the processing of interoceptive signals [i.e. of internal bodily states] in the brain might contribute to our sense of time,’ Meissner and Wittmann concluded.

If you want the whole article just click the link above. It is fascinating to see that our heartbeat may be linked with our perception of time. It is just a theory for the moment.

I found another article, which states this:

However, a simple linear relationship between heart rate and time perception is almost definitely an oversimplification. For instance, it’s clear that increasing heart rate (by exercise for instance) doesn’t affect time perception significantly. But there are other elements of cardiac signals that provide a wider overview of the autonomic nervous system.

The article is about how hard is to actually find where our perception of time comes from. It is not a simple thing and the article just concludes this:

In sum, this research seems to suggest that while the beats of the heart themselves are not analogous to a pacemaker, changes in the autonomic nervous system are either a corollary of a timing mechanism, or the autonomic nervous system directly plays role in how humans perceive time. Given the non-invasive nature of heart rate recordings, future research may be able to clarify exactly how signals from the heart inform our perception of time.

The theory is there but we need further research and I don't know why there isn't any. Like it was hard as hell to find any articles about this. If you want to read the full article click the link below:

Time perception and the heart

I think is way more complicated and we also have a lot of different factors which come in play. Our mind changes our perception, our emotions and many more. But we have an internal clock and if we start to figure out how this works it would be amazing. Like researching in a sleep state to see why we wake up earlier than the alarm is maybe a good base to start. But we all know that meaningful researches rarely happen or are being just hidden from us. Well, we will see as time goes on. I just thought it is a good theory and I wanted to share it with you guys. What do you think? Is it possible a connection between our heartbeat and our perception of time or it is just way too simple and there is much more? Or maybe all of it is way complicated but the heartbeat also plays a huge role in our perception of time? Write what you think down in the comments so we can have a discussion.

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