{"id":6720,"date":"2011-04-26T11:10:19","date_gmt":"2011-04-26T18:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/?p=6720"},"modified":"2011-04-26T11:10:19","modified_gmt":"2011-04-26T18:10:19","slug":"does-time-run-faster-when-youre-terrified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/26\/does-time-run-faster-when-youre-terrified\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Time Run Faster When You&#8217;re Terrified?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Neuroscientists have all the fun.  When we physicists think about the fundamental nature of time, it largely involves standing hopefully in front of a blackboard and writing the occasional equation, or at best <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/09\/23\/time-dilation-in-your-living-room\/\">sending clocks on strange journeys<\/a>.  All in the service of very good ideas, of course.  But when I give talks about these wonderful ideas, I learn that what people care more about are down-to-earth questions about aging and memory.  So not only do neuroscientists get to tackle those questions directly, but they do so by <strong>dropping people from tall buildings<\/strong>.  How cool is that?<\/p>\n<div class=\"lyte-wrapper\" title=\"Dr. David Eagleman on the Discovery Channel\" style=\"width:640px;max-width:100%;margin:5px;\"><div class=\"lyMe\" id=\"WYL_8RdxPqL9JHY\" itemprop=\"video\" itemscope itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/VideoObject\"><div><meta itemprop=\"thumbnailUrl\" content=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/8RdxPqL9JHY\/hqdefault.jpg\" \/><meta itemprop=\"embedURL\" content=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8RdxPqL9JHY\" \/><meta itemprop=\"duration\" content=\"PT4M55S\" \/><meta itemprop=\"uploadDate\" content=\"2008-10-15T17:18:19Z\" \/><\/div><div id=\"lyte_8RdxPqL9JHY\" data-src=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/8RdxPqL9JHY\/hqdefault.jpg\" class=\"pL\"><div class=\"tC\"><div class=\"tT\" itemprop=\"name\">Dr. David Eagleman on the Discovery Channel<\/div><\/div><div class=\"play\"><\/div><div class=\"ctrl\"><div class=\"Lctrl\"><\/div><div class=\"Rctrl\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><noscript><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/8RdxPqL9JHY\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/8RdxPqL9JHY\/0.jpg\" alt=\"Dr. David Eagleman on the Discovery Channel\" width=\"640\" height=\"340\" \/><br \/>Watch this video on YouTube<\/a><\/noscript><meta itemprop=\"description\" content=\"Dr. David Eagleman, neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX, on the Discovery Channel.\"><\/div><\/div><div class=\"lL\" style=\"max-width:100%;width:640px;margin:5px;\"><\/div><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.eagleman.com\/\">David Eagleman<\/a> is an interesting guy, as a recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/reporting\/2011\/04\/25\/110425fa_fact_bilger\"><em>New Yorker<\/em> profile<\/a> reveals.  Mild-mannered neuroscientist by day, in his spare time he manages to write <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Sum-Forty-Tales-Afterlives-Vintage\/dp\/0307389936\/\">fiction<\/a> as well as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eagleman.com\/netmatters\">iPad-based superbooks<\/a>.  But his <a href=\"http:\/\/eaglemanlab.net\/\">research<\/a> focuses on how the mind works, in particular how we perceive time.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve written previously about how, as far as the brain is concerned, <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2009\/04\/14\/remembering-the-past-is-like-imagining-the-future\/\">remembering the past is like imagining the future<\/a>.  Eagleman studies a different neurological feature of time: how we perceive it passing under a variety of different conditions.  You might be familiar with the feeling that &#8220;time slows down&#8221; when you are frightened or in some extreme environment.  The problem is, how to test this hypothesis?  It&#8217;s hard to come up with experimental protocols that frighten the crap out of human subjects while remaining consistent with all sorts of bothersome regulations.<\/p>\n<p>So Eagleman and collaborators did the obvious thing:  they tied subjects very carefully into harnesses, and threw them from a very tall platform.  The non-obvious thing is that they invented a gizmo that flashed numbers as they fell, so that they could determine whether the brain really did speed up (perceiving a larger number of subjective moments per objective second) during this period of fear.<\/p>\n<p>Answer: no, not really.  There is a perceptual effect that kicks in after the event, giving the subject the impression that time moved more slowly; but in fact they didn&#8217;t perceive any more moments than a non-terrified person would have.  Still, incredibly interesting results; for example, when you&#8217;re afraid, the brain lays down memories differently than when you&#8217;re in a normal state.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously, of course, these findings need to be replicated.  If you&#8217;ll excuse me, I&#8217;m off to find some grad students and a tall building.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Neuroscientists have all the fun. When we physicists think about the fundamental nature of time, it largely involves standing hopefully in front of a blackboard and writing the occasional equation, or at best sending clocks on strange journeys. All in the service of very good ideas, of course. But when I give talks about these [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","category-time"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}