Unlike the heartbeat that comes from space, this time we’re talking about human heartbeats. Did you know that the perception of time varies according to the heartbeat? A new study shows us why.
A team of researchers from Cornell University in the United States has published in the journal Phychophysiology a new study that demonstrates a real one curiosity about the weather and the beat of our heart. The experts coordinated by Adam K. Anderson carried out an electrocardiogram on 45 volunteers, all young and without cardiac pathologies, in order to monitor their cardiac activity with a temporal resolution capable of reaching up to a millisecond.
The peculiarity lies in the fact that the electrocardiogram was connected to a computer so that each heartbeat determined the production of a short sound with a variable duration of 80-180 milliseconds. Volunteers were then required to rate the self-perceived duration of each target stimulus. The results leave little room for doubt.
Indeed, it became clear that the sound it was perceived to be longer when preceded by a shorter heartbeat, while the same sound appeared decidedly shorter when preceded by a longer heartbeat. Anderson himself in this regard, states that: “Our research shows that moment-to-moment time experience is synchronized with and changes with heartbeat length.“
As if that weren’t enough, it is natural to note that if the brain literally uses the heart as a stopwatch, then it is possible to say that it can also affect the “ticking”. In fact, the scholars underline how the heart rate of the participants changed radically as soon as they paid attention to the sounds emitted by the computers, thus altering the perception of time.
While it’s true that our perception of time slows down on a crowded train, apparently that wouldn’t be the only case in which it changes. So it is one connection between heart and perception of time highly important, since this would help us to better manage efforts and energy resources based on our physical conditions.