"Remember when summer vacations felt endless as a kid? Those three months stretched out like an eternity of possibility. Now, entire years seem to blur past before you can catch your breath. If you've ever wondered why December arrives faster each year, you're not alone. This strange acceleration of time isn't just in your head - well, actually it is, but there's fascinating science behind it."
"According to researcher Enric Espel Sanchez, "As we age, our internal clock system becomes less sensitive, leading to a perception that time passes more quickly." Think of it like this - when you were a child, your brain was like a high-speed camera, capturing every single frame of experience in vivid detail. Each moment was processed, analyzed, and stored with incredible precision. But as we age, that camera starts recording at a lower frame rate."
"This isn't about memory failing or attention wandering. It's about a fundamental change in how our neural circuits measure the passage of time. The same researcher found that "The perception of time shifts significantly around the age of mental maturity, aligning with a proposed inversion point where sensitivity to temporal stimuli decreases." What does this mean for you and me? Well, when our internal clocks tick slower, external time appears to speed up."
Aging reduces the sensitivity of internal timing systems, producing a subjective acceleration of time. Neural circuits that measure temporal intervals operate with lower resolution, so fewer moments are encoded per unit time. Childhood experience registers more detailed temporal information, creating a richer sense of duration. Around mental maturity an inversion point appears where sensitivity to temporal stimuli decreases. The result is not primarily memory failure or inattention but a fundamental shift in temporal processing that makes external events seem to pass more quickly.
Read at Silicon Canals
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