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There are few more fascinating and mind-bending frontiers in fields of neuroscience and psychology than the study of how the brain perceives time. While symphonies, stock markets and our daily schedules are conveniently constructed around the well-defined, predictable progression of what might be called 'objective time', our brains take a much more flexible approach to dealing with passing events, stretching, condensing and generally distorting our perception of time in response to a variety of external and internal factors.
In fact, brain time - or our mind's perception of time - is an inherently subjective phenomenon. And it is perhaps never more subjective than when we are confronted with events that bring about a strong emotional response. Numerous studies in recent decades have repeatedly highlighted the fact that both our
spatial perception and time perception can be measurably affected by negative or positive emotional experiences.
For instance, study subjects who are shown images that the brain associates with intensely positive experiences - like, say, erotic scenes - will consistently report that these images flit by more quickly than intensely negative pictures such as a grisly murder scene, even when both images are displayed for the exact same length of time.
"We imagine that we're perfect at judging time, but we're not," says
Simona Buetti, a postdoctoral researcher in psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "If you see a disgusting image, like a photo of a mutilated body, you will perceive this image lasting longer than if you see a picture of people on a roller coaster, or an erotic image."
Buetti and her colleague
Alejandro Lleras recently set out to see if they could offset the brain's tendency to distort time in emotionally intense situations. The results of their study, published in the online journal
Frontiers in Psychology, demonstrate that this stretching and shortening of perceived time can be corrected simply by making a person feel that they are in control of the situation.
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