Have you noticed that time seems to pass more slowly when you're waiting in a long line?But when you're playing with your friends, hours seem like minutes. Of course, time is always passing at the same speed —but why does it sometimes feel different?
A study published in The Journal of Neuroscience can tell us the answer. Scientist Masamichi Hayashi and his research team in the US found that it has to do with neurons(神经元)in our brains that are sensitive(敏感的)to time.
The researchers checked the brain activity of 18 adults who were asked tolook at a picture on a screen for a certain amount of time. They were then asked to guess how long they'd been looking at the picture. They tended to guess incorrectly when they were asked to stare at the picture for very long or very short periods of time.
After looking at their brain activity, the researchers found that neurons fire(传递信号)in response(对……有反应)to certain amounts of time. When they receive repetitive stimulation(重复的刺激)such as staring at a screen, these neurons finally get tired and don't work properly. It doesn't matter whether this amount of time is long or short, as long as the stimulation is repetitive. However, other neurons still work normally causing an imbalance in the way that we experience time.
When you stand in line or do some other repetitive tasks, such as math homework, your time-sensitive neurons get tired and cause you to feel like time is going slowly. But when you're doing something more fast-paced such as playing soccer, you experience the opposite effect. Either way, you can't always trust your brain when it comes to your experience of time.
