When the seconds turn into minutes ... Why does time pass very slowly in times of danger?

When I was little I was waiting for my favorite movie to watch. The waiting moments were very long, and the moments of enjoying it were long. Also, as I got older, I quickly felt the passage of time and everything was passing quickly.

Time passes quickly when you watch a thrilling movie or spend your vacation in a beautiful place. When you focus completely on something specific that does not feel like time, it seems to us less time than it actually was.

Can we control the speed of time?

Time passes very slowly in situations associated with fear and danger, and many studies indicate that fear, boredom and waiting slowly feel you passing along with some non-fearful alertness also slows down times like deep meditation, or under the influence of LSD.

Time passes slowly in waiting and boredom; as a result of our lack of focus on anything specific during those moments, our focus is only on the passage of time, which makes you feel that it is passing slowly.

When doing some experiments, such as some students looking at a spider for 45 seconds and asking how long the experiment lasted, their experience was more time-consuming than the real time. When asked about some adventures and dangerous sports such as jumping from a plane or walking on wires, Also from the time the task took.

To test the idea of ​​rapid brain reaction in moments of fear, neuroscientist David Eagleman and his team at the Baylor College School of Medicine experimented with the crash of 15 volunteers from a height of 150 feet without ropes, but placed them inside a special network to protect them from falling with an hourly clockwork around Their "perceptual chronometer" is used to show random numbers quickly.

"It's the most dangerous experience I've ever had, but it's the perfect way to put volunteers in a situation that feels slow and dangerous, " says David Eagleman . "This proves the hypothesis that time passes slowly when you feel scared."

Assuming the idea of ​​speeding the brain in times of fear, volunteers will slowly feel the time to read the rapid numbers that appear in the machine. Indeed, volunteers have realized the numbers that performed better than they did in their safe position in the lab.

When asked what they expected for the time taken by the fall experience, they had a 36% longer time horizon than the real time of the experiment.

But does this mean that people are more aware and absorbed in times of danger?

To make sure of that hypothesis, David and his colleagues repeated the experiment with the speed of the numbers appearing on the machine gradually to reach the speed of normal human capacity. Volunteers knew the numbers even faster than they could not perceive, proving that the hypothesis was incorrect.

If the scientific explanation slowly pass the time when feeling scared?

Scientists differed in the interpretation of the phenomenon, so we have several possibilities, including: Assuming that nerve or psychological cells are affected by the frightening event, the brain responds to this trick as a means of helping to survive. This trick gives us a greater chance of survival when we are exposed to a dangerous emergency situation. Think about issuing the right reaction to the situation.

The other explanation assumes that the dangerous situations cause us many impressions and expectations that the brain tries to absorb, which causes the activity of the amygdala region in the brain, so that the frightening situations are associated with recalling a large number of memories associated with dealing with similar situations. The more memories you have about a situation, Time is slower than its real time, and these situations are a large collection of memories that we recall after the end of those times we feel how long it was really long when passing that experience!

The perception of time depends on the amount of energy the brain uses in that situation. The brain begins to use the energy mechanism to recognize the times since the age of five. This is why we feel that times pass quickly as we age, so children feel that their moments of happiness are as long as summer vacation. While adults feel that days are running fast, all these different situations depend on states of consciousness and awareness.