- An article in the European Review magazine argues that the principles of physics are behind people’s perception of time and explains why it varies with age.
- Its author, Adrian Bejan, states that the perception of time is inversely proportional to the processing time of the physical mental image and the speed of the images that are captured, which decreases when you get older.
You’ve probably heard your parents say take advantage of your time now that you’re young because as you get older time flies by.
Maybe you didn’t take it very seriously or maybe you did, but the truth is that they were right, according to an article in the European Review.
Adrian Bejan, professor of mechanical engineering at Duke University and author of the research has explained that the principles of physics are behind the perception of time.
Bejan, who won the Benjamin Franklin Medal from the Franklin Institute for his pioneering contributions, argues that the perception of time changes as the processing time of the physical mental image changes and the speed of the images that are captured.
Each person has their own “mental time” that is not related to the passing of hours, days or years, but to the stimuli themselves.
To reach this conclusion, the engineering professor relied on findings from other scientists who have studied physical and mental processes related to the passage of time.
“The present is different from the past because the mental vision has changed, not because someone’s clock is ticking,” says Bejan. “Physical time is not the same time of the mind, because the time that you perceive is not the same as that perceived by another.”
Time passes in the mind’s eye
As you age, the rate at which changes in mental images are perceived decreases due to several transformative physical characteristics, including vision, brain complexity, and degradation of the pathways that carry information, leading to the feeling of that time is speeding up.
This effect is related to saccadic eye movement, that is, unconscious eye movements where your eyes fixate on something and your brain process the visual information it has received.
Furthermore, the relationship between the processing of stimuli and the feeling that time passes quickly is inversely proportional, so when you are young and experience many new stimuli, time seems to be passing more slowly, but when you are older the production of mental images it slows down and time seems to go by faster.
Fatigue and brain development are also determinants as if the brain is tired can not transfer data effectively when you try to simultaneously see and make sense of the visual information.
In addition, over the years, the neural connections of the brain and the body increase, so they become more complicated, to which is added its degradation, making visual processing take longer.
“Older people see more slowly, but feel that time passes faster,” explains Bejan.
Bejan believes that these perceptions can be altered with some guidelines such as being healthy and sleeping well, which would lead to a slowdown in the time of the mind.