Sense of time
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The sense of time can refer either to the perception of relatively short periods of time, or the perception of times which are a significant fraction of a person's lifetime.
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[edit] Short-term
Although the sense of time is not associated with a specific sensory system, the work of psychologists and neuroscientists indicates that our brains do have a system governing the perception of time.[1] This is a highly distributed system including the cerebral cortex, cerebellum and basal ganglia as its components. One particular component, the suprachiasmatic nuclei, is responsible for the circadian (or daily) rhythm, while other cell clusters appear to be capable of shorter-range (ultradian) timekeeping. The sense of time is impaired in some people with neurological diseases such as Parkinson's disease and attention deficit disorder.
Human perception of duration is subjective and variable. For example, time may appear to slow or drag as one eagerly anticipates the arrival of a specific event. A school day may seem endless for a student who is waiting for the bell indicating that school is finished for the day. The traditional proverb describing this effect is "a watched pot never boils".[2][3]
Psychoactive drugs can also impair the perception of time. Stimulants can lead both humans and rats to overestimate time intervals[4][5] while depressants can have the opposite effect.[6] The level of activity in the brain of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and adrenaline may be the reason for this. Errors in estimated time intervals might be caused by varying levels of neurotransmitters in the brain.[7]
People who have been hypnotized underestimate the duration of their trance.[8]
In an experiment comparing a group of subjects aged between 19 and 24 and a group between 60 and 80 asked to estimate when they thought 3 minutes had passed, it was found that the younger group's estimate was on average 3 minutes and 3 seconds, while the older group averaged 3 minutes and 40 seconds[9]; time seemed to pass faster for the older group.
[edit] Long-term
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It is a known phenomenon that long periods of time appear to pass faster as people grow older. The time from a child's eighth birthday to the ninth seems an eternity; the time from the sixty-eighth to the sixty-ninth seems to pass in a flash.[10]
[edit] References
- ^ "Brain Areas Critical To Human Time Sense Identified". UniSci - Daily University Science News. 2001-02-27. http://www.unisci.com/stories/20011/0227013.htm.
- ^ G Underwood, RA Swain (1973), "Selectivity of attention and the perception of duration", Perception 2: 101, doi:
- ^ SW Brown, DA Stubbs (1992), "Attention and interference in prospective and retrospective timing", Perception
- ^ Wittmann, M.; Leland DS, Churan J, Paulus MP. (8 October 2007). "Impaired time perception and motor timing in stimulant-dependent subjects" (online abstract). Drug Alcohol Depend. 90 (2-3): 183–92. doi:. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17434690.
- ^ Cheng, Ruey-Kuang; Macdonald, Christopher J.; Meck, Warren H. (2006). "Differential effects of cocaine and ketamine on time estimation : Implications for neurobiological models of interval timing" (online abstract). Pharmacology, biochemistry and behavior 85 (1): 114–122. doi:. http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=18303059.
- ^ Tinklenberg, Jared R.; Walton T. Roth1; Bert S. Kopell (January 1976). "Marijuana and ethanol: Differential effects on time perception, heart rate, and subjective response". Psychopharmacology 49 (3): 275–279. doi:. http://www.springerlink.com/content/q1227453r481x439/.
- ^ Arzy, Shahar; Istvan Molnar-Szakacs; Olaf Blanke (2008-06-18). "Self in Time: Imagined Self-Location Influences Neural Activity Related to Mental Time Travel" (Abstract). The Journal of Neuroscience 28 (25): 6502–6507. doi:. http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/abstract/28/25/6502. Retrieved on 2008-08-25.
- ^ Bowers, Kenneth (January 1979), "Hypnosis and the perception of time", International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis) 27 (1): 29–41, doi:, http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a790232921~db=all
- ^ New Scientist magazine: Why time flies in old age
- ^ New Scientist magazine: Look how time flies . . .
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Time perception research at the University of Manchester
- "A Cognitive Model of Retrospective Duration Estimations", Hee-Kyung Ahn, et al., March 7, 2006.
- "Time, Force, Motion, and the Semantics of Natural Languages", Wolfgang Wildgen, Antwerp Papers in Linguistics, 2003/2004.
- Can Time Slow Down?
- "Interactions emerge between biological clocks", The Pharmaceutical Journal, Vol 275 No 7376 p644, 19 November 2005 Registration required.
- "Time and the Brain: How Subjective Time Relates to Neural Time" (November 9, 2005). Eagleman, David M.; Peter U. Tse, Dean Buonomano, Peter Janssen, Anna Christina Nobre, Alex O. Holcombe. (Review, full text). The Journal of Neuroscience 25 (45):10369-10371.
- "Evidence for a Short-Period Internal Clock in Humans", Tom G. Slanger, Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 2, N. 2, pp. 203-216, 1998
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