Hi everyone!
Have you felt like time flew so fast when you're having fun, whereas time passed so slowly when you're having a hard/boring time? I feel that way every single day. Time flies incredibly fast when I'm at DisneyLand and 12 hours there feel like one hour, while one hour in boring class feels like eternity.
The world's most precise clocks run at a steady pace, messing up by only about 1 second every 300 million years. However, the brain ticks its rhythmic seconds, creating its own unique sense of time. But why can't the brain keep time like a clock? Why does time move faster when we are happy and slower when we are bored?
According to Dr. Michael Shadorn, a neuroscientist at Columbia University Irvine Medical Center, the brain can represent the probability that something is going to occur, given that it hasn't happened yet, and how the brain perceives time depends on its expectations. Each thought has its own "limits." If you take reading as an example, the end of a word or the end of a sentence is recognized as one limit. When people are crazy about reading, they can read while being aware of both the near limits like the end of the sentence and the distant limits like the end of the story itself. However, when you are reading while being bored, you will be aware of only the near limits such as the end of the sentence, and you will not be able to be conscious of the end of the story, so you will feel a long experience time.
Joe Patton, a chief researcher of neuroscientist who works for the Champari Mode Foundation, a private biomedical research organization in Portugal, claims that "multiple mechanisms are working on the way of the sense of time." According to an experiment using rodents, the faster brain cells activate each other and neurons form networks for thinking, the shorter the experience time. According to another experiment using rodents, dopamine, a type of neurotransmitters, involved in the reward system of the brain has been found to affect the sense of time. When you're having a fun time, a lot of dopamine is released and the sense of time feels short, but on the contrary, when you're being bored, there is less dopamine and the sense of time feels long. "It may be possible to explain that the sense of time is not precise from an evolutionary point of view. Life is a series of "where to go and where to stay" decisions, and the internal sense of time may be useful in determining when it's rewarding to stay" explains Patton.
According to Dr. David Eagleman, who teaches psychology at Stanford University, "Compared to experienced things, when you do things for the first time, a dense network of neurons is formed in your brain, which seems longer than it actually is. It feels like it's like that." When you are a child, all events are inexperienced, so the brain formed a network of more dense neurons, but as you get older, there will be fewer new things, so a strong network of neurons will not be formed, That is why time seems to pass faster as you get old.
So if you can't beat sleepiness in class, you could attempt to be conscious about the class ending time and be as busy as possible to think "oh I only have this much time!". Or you could also try to do something that makes you excited although what you could do is restricted in class... (I often fantasize about or imagine something fun like a day trip planning:D). On the contrary, if you feel time flies fast, you could challenge new things to make your life denser!
I will keep exploring this topic next time, from another perspective.
See you soon!
Reference:
1. Why Does Time Fly When You're Having Fun?: https://www.livescience.com/64901-time-fly-having-fun.html
2. Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives by Dean Buonomano
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