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with Elderly Parent’s Distorted Sense of Time agingcare.com | learning-connections.org.uk: Making Sense of the Senses learning-connections.org.... | Medical News | Health News - Neuroscientist Don Katz makes sense of... healthcanal.com | Basis For Ayurvedic Philosophy: The Senses, five elements, five senses,... holisticonline.com |
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. When asked to place the time of a past event, people have a systematic tendency to recall that recent events occurred farther back in time (backward telescoping) and distant events occurred more recently (forward telescoping) than is actually the case.[1]  Experiments have shown rats successfully estimating intervals of time.[2][3]
[edit] TheoryWilliam Friedman contrasted two theories for a sense of time[4]:
Unfortunately, the trace model comes into conflict with a very familiar feature of our experience: that some memories of recent events may fade more quickly than memories of more distant events.
[edit] Short-termAlthough the sense of time is not associated with a specific sensory system, the work of psychologists and neuroscientists indicates that human brains do have a system governing the perception of time.[5] 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".[6][7] Psychoactive drugs can also impair the perception of time. Stimulants can lead both humans and rats to overestimate time intervals[8][9] while depressants can have the opposite effect.[10] 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.[11] People who have been hypnotized underestimate the duration of their trance.[12] 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[13]; time seemed to pass more quickly for the older group. [edit] Specious presentThe specious present is the time duration wherein one's perceptions are considered to be in the present. The term specious present was first introduced by the psychologist E.R. Clay, and developed by William James.[14] The experienced present is ‘specious’ in that, unlike the objective present, it is an interval and not a durationless instant. [edit] Long-termIt 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.[15] Stephen Hawking also suggests that the perception of time is a function of age, according to the ratio unit of time to time lived.[citation needed] For example, one hour to a six-month-old person would be approximately 1:4368, while one hour to a 40-year-old would be 1:349,440. Therefore an hour appears much longer to a young child than to an adult, even though the measure of time is the same. [edit] AlterationsA form of temporal illusion verifiable by experiment is the kappa effect,[16] whereby time intervals between visual events are perceived as relatively longer or shorter depending on the relative spatial positions of the events. In other words: the perception of temporal intervals appears to be directly affected, in these cases, by the perception of spatial intervals. [edit] Special relativityThis common experience was used to familiarize the general public to the ideas presented by Einstein's theory of relativity in a 1930 cartoon by Sidney "George" Strube:[17][18]
[edit] Psychoactive substancesAltered states of consciousness are sometimes characterized by a different estimation of time. Some psychoactive substances – such as entheogens – may also dramatically alter a person's temporal judgement. When viewed under the influence of such substances as LSD, psychedelic mushrooms, and peyote, a clock may appear to be a strange reference point and a useless tool for measuring the passage of events as it does not correlate with the user's experience. At higher doses, time may appear to slow down, stop, speed up, go backwards and even seem out of sequence.[citation needed] [edit] See also[edit] References
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