Buzz
In the past few weeks, time has seemed completely irrelevant. What would normally feel like a day or two now stretches into what feels like weeks. Even though the World Health Organization declared this a pandemic just a few weeks ago, for many of us, it feels as if it's been going on for much longer.
This strange sensation of time distortion actually has a scientific explanation linked to how our brains store memories in periods of intense fear and stress. The most well-known experiment that illustrates this phenomenon was conducted by neuroscientist David Eagleman, who is a neuroscientist, author, and the creator of the PBS series “The Brain with David Eagleman.”
To investigate whether fear actually makes time seem to slow down, Eagleman created an experiment where participants leapt from a 150-foot platform. During their fall, they were instructed to watch a digital display strapped to their wrists, showing numbers that changed at a rate just beyond what humans could naturally comprehend.
The hypothesis was that if their perception of time had truly slowed down, they would have been able to read the rapidly changing numbers. But they couldn't, indicating that our sense of time isn't actually altered in moments of intense fear.
The explanation, however, appears to be tied to how our brain processes and stores memories during such moments, and how we later recall them. When we're afraid, our brain is in overdrive, hyper-focused on capturing every minute detail to ensure our survival.
As Eagleman explains in this video, 'People don’t actually see time in slow motion during an event.' Rather, during life-threatening situations, our brain records the memory with extraordinary detail. Later, when we recall that memory, the excess details confuse our brain, leading it to believe the event lasted much longer than it truly did.
Currently, in the midst of COVID-19, we're all on high alert. Our collective focus is on one thing: keeping ourselves and our loved ones safe. This means we're constantly checking news updates, staying hyper-aware of anything that could spread the virus, paying attention to hand-washing, monitoring our own health for symptoms, and tracking the rising number of cases.
So that feeling that time has shifted into a strange new dimension? It turns out, it's your brain doing exactly what it's designed to do in times of fear and uncertainty.
