David Eagleman, a neuroscientist, and his colleagues at Baylor College of Medicine have found that during emergencies, brain does not speed up due to adrenaline flow, but because of the illusion, it seems that time is slowing down.
To see if danger makes people experience time in slow motion, David and his colleagues scared few volunteers by dropping them into a net from 150 feet of height with no ropes attached. Volunteers reported that their own fall lasted longer than other volunteers' fall.
To see if this experience (of being in danger) makes volunteers' brain run faster and they can see and perceive more, David and his colleagues have developed a device called "perceptual chronometer". This device flicker numbers on its screen, and it can be tied on the volunteer's wrist. Speed of the numbers appeared on the screen can be controlled.
If the brain sped up when in danger, the researchers theorized numbers on the perceptual chronometers would appear slow enough to read while volunteers fell. Instead, the scientists found that volunteers could not read the numbers at faster-than-normal speeds.
Instead, such time warping seems to be a trick played by one's memory. When a person is scared, a brain area called the amygdala becomes more active, laying down an extra set of memories that go along with those normally taken care of by other parts of the brain.
"In this way, frightening events are associated with richer and denser memories," Eagleman explained. "And the more memory you have of an event, the longer you believe it took."
Eagleman added this illusion "is related to the phenomenon that time seems to speed up as you grow older. When you're a child, you lay down rich memories for all your experiences; when you're older, you've seen it all before and lay down fewer memories. Therefore, when a child looks back at the end of a summer, it seems to have lasted forever; adults think it zoomed by."
To see if danger makes people experience time in slow motion, David and his colleagues scared few volunteers by dropping them into a net from 150 feet of height with no ropes attached. Volunteers reported that their own fall lasted longer than other volunteers' fall.
To see if this experience (of being in danger) makes volunteers' brain run faster and they can see and perceive more, David and his colleagues have developed a device called "perceptual chronometer". This device flicker numbers on its screen, and it can be tied on the volunteer's wrist. Speed of the numbers appeared on the screen can be controlled.
If the brain sped up when in danger, the researchers theorized numbers on the perceptual chronometers would appear slow enough to read while volunteers fell. Instead, the scientists found that volunteers could not read the numbers at faster-than-normal speeds.
Instead, such time warping seems to be a trick played by one's memory. When a person is scared, a brain area called the amygdala becomes more active, laying down an extra set of memories that go along with those normally taken care of by other parts of the brain.
"In this way, frightening events are associated with richer and denser memories," Eagleman explained. "And the more memory you have of an event, the longer you believe it took."
Eagleman added this illusion "is related to the phenomenon that time seems to speed up as you grow older. When you're a child, you lay down rich memories for all your experiences; when you're older, you've seen it all before and lay down fewer memories. Therefore, when a child looks back at the end of a summer, it seems to have lasted forever; adults think it zoomed by."
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