David Eagleman: Your Time-Bending Brain (YouTube Geek Week!) | Big Think

David Eagleman: Your Time-Bending Brain (YouTube Geek Week!)
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Neuroscientist David Eagleman explains how your brain perceives time (retrospectively).
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David Eagleman:

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist and a New York Times bestselling author. He directs the Laboratory for Perception and Action at the Baylor College of Medicine, where he also directs the Initiative on Neuroscience and Law. He is best known for his work on time perception, brain plasticity, synesthesia, and neurolaw.

He is the writer and presenter of the PBS epic series, The Brain with David Eagleman, and the author of the companion book, The Brain: The Story of You.

Beyond his 100+ academic publications, he has published many popular books. His bestselling book Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, explores the neuroscience "under the hood" of the conscious mind: all the aspects of neural function to which we have no awareness or access. His work of fiction, SUM, is an international bestseller published in 28 languages and turned into two operas. Why the Net Matters examines what the advent of the internet means on the timescale of civilizations. The award-winning Wednesday is Indigo Blue explores the neurological condition of synesthesia, in which the senses are blended.

Eagleman is a TED speaker, a Guggenheim Fellow, a winner of the McGovern Award for Excellence in Biomedical Communication, a Next Generation Texas Fellow, Vice-Chair on the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Neuroscience & Behaviour, a research fellow in the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, Chief Scientific Advisor for the Mind Science Foundation, and a board member of The Long Now Foundation. He has served as an academic editor for several scientific journals. He was named Science Educator of the Year by the Society for Neuroscience, and was featured as one of the Brightest Idea Guys by Italy's Style magazine. He is founder of the company BrainCheck and the cofounder of the company NeoSensory. He was the scientific advisor for the television drama Perception, and has been profiled on the Colbert Report, NOVA Science Now, the New Yorker, CNN's Next List, and many other venues. He appears regularly on radio and television to discuss literature and science.
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TRANSCRIPT:

David Eagleman: So this is an area of interest to me and my lab’s been studying this for a while, is why time is rubbery and can speed up or slow down. And it turns out, when I looked into the literature on this, the experiment had never been done about why time seems to move in slow motion when you’re in a life threatening situation. But I talked to so many people and I’d experienced it myself that I wanted to study that. So I found a way to study it by dropping people from 150 foot tall tower and measuring their time perception on the way down. And that, plus several other experiments we did in my lab, led me to understand that people don't actually see time in slow motion during an event. Instead, it’s a completely retrospective assessment.

In other words, when you’re in a life threatening situation, your brain writes down memory much more densely, and then retrospectively, when you look at that, you have so many details that you don't normally have that it seems as though it must have lasted a very long time.

That's the only interpretation your brain can make. So time, your assessment of how long something took, has a lot to do with how much energy your brain has to burn during the event and how much footage you have of the event.

[AustinRyanOdom]

If I closed my eyes in a quiet classroom, I would have barely any "footage" to "retrospectively" look at and yet it would seem like an eternity. A night out with friends, with constant thought put into almost every action I make because i'm in a social environment doesn't seem like long at all. When you are self aware of time, it slows down. Your hypothesis doesn't add up.

[hynjus]

The best experiments start with "I dropped people from 150 metre tall tower"

[CornerTalker]

Oh, I'm so sorry. I thought the idea was to introduce an idea and then discuss it. You make it clear that the idea really is to stomp on anyone that asks questions and stifle discussion. Thanks for clearing that up.

[Phonolith]

Same here, as I tried it as youth. Time slowed down.
I think, it's because of the neurotransmitters.
When I was high, I noticed more environmental details and got distracted by them, so that I didn't see "the whole thing" anymore.
Afterward, I could remember, but only few things,
like it was a dream.

[Vulcapyro]

I've assumed this is why when you're bored/isolated, time seems to pass slowly: your areas of concentration are restricted to what's around you, and your brain has the free resources to record all of this information, but it's all similar information. Your brain looks at consecutive recent events, and links together the many similar events as one perceived period of time, giving the illusion of slow time.
It later flushes out the useless memories, which is why afterwards it seemed like nothing.

[JustAskQuestions]

For those who don't know, it was a pretty neat experiment. He dropped them (with a harness of course) with a stopwatch that flashed a secret number faster than the human eye can normally see. If his test subjects could read the number, he knew they were seeing in some sort of slow motion.

[God_is_Justice]

thats what meditation does for me. when I'm on the medi roll :-) I am super present and can describe details clearly, I also had the same experience when I was at the top of my soccer game... makes sense because when someone falls from that high they are very present, they are there,

[PapaCuppa]

It's so interesting how the present and the past are as important parameters as the experience themselves.

[akawilly]

Amazing. Bravo!
I remember an article a few years back in popular science that was on David eagleman's work so far at the time. I wish I could remember the details of it, but anyway it is nice to remember an old article and the conclusions of the research.

[Volound]

i disagree with the conclusion on the basis that i have very clear memories of thinking in the moment "wow" because of how much time seemed to dilate. that feeling of "holy shit" was decided live, not afterwards.

[TheHuggableEmpire]

Makes complete sense! In a dreamless sleep you don't have much "footage" so the night seems to pass in an instant

[greenzoid]

This so explains why I have a completely confused memory about the time I was stepped on by a skate in a hockey game. I feel like it took forever to happen, and I feel like I have a very vivid memory of what happened, but I can't actually remember what happened because from my perspective I couldn't see what was going on and didn't realize consciously that I was in danger, but my body definitely knew.

[hartistry]

MG!, I just realized something!: Since any given event in its precise inception, is only understood milliseconds in our 'past', this could explain the quandary in the famous double-slit experiment's Observation paradox. Because, as observers, we may be missing some process or event during this incredibly short moment time.

[SanDanielDK]

That's the one thing I was wondering about all of this. Maybe what he means is that immediately upon realising the severity of the situation, you start "writing" data densely. The timespan between your brain registering this and you feeling the sensation of time slowing down, is so minute that it all just felt like slowmotion?

[hraunhamar]

The memory is so much more dense because the person is fully present in the life threatening moment compared to when you are watching a youtube video and your mind is wandering.

[BrownBeast]

My interpretation is that geeks are really smart people that often lack in other areas such as social skills. And nerds get enthusiastic about things without being ironic, so, rather that being 'cool', they take invested interest in things like video games, books, academia and even things like sport facts/statistics. Basically just being keen. Although really both are interchangeable as they both basically put things that are important to them (intellect) ahead of things 'important' to society

[SanDanielDK]

I remember reading that the main reason for this was simple numbers. The further back you go, the more "recalls" have happened, i.e. thinking of places, situations etc., so the brain stores that in a place that's easier "to get to", if you know what I mean. I humbly admit that I don't have a source for this, so feel free to be critical of this information. :)

[joebazooks]

I saw a video of, what I think was, an experiment of his. Subjects were dropped or jumped from towers with a digital wrist watch that would flash a number for a fraction of a second (I honestly can't remember exactly how long it was). Subjects were unable to perceive the flashed number when not falling, however, as they were falling, what was discovered is that their ability to perceive the flashed number seemingly increased. This, to me, seems contrary to current understanding of time percepti

[ArmandoOrtegaM]

The thing is that you experience the slowing of time simultaneusly, not after the event.

[Thrashlock]

I can talk from experience. I am 19, remember more than I should and I feel terribly old, sometimes like an old sage compared to my same age friend which is why I tend to hang out with 40+ year olds and drink like a Viking.