The mind has long been called our “ticker”. Now, new research shows why it’s even more than previously imagined.
For an adult with an average heart rate of 60 beats per minute, the heart becomes a very useful built-in timekeeper. But a new study from Cornell University shows that the heart can affect time perception even in people who don’t have a very accurate pulse.
In a paper with an interesting title, “The wrinkles of subsecond time perception are synchronized with the heartLead author Saede Sadeghi, a PhD student in the field of psychology, explains how he and his colleagues came to this conclusion.
An electrocardiogram (ECG) machine designed to measure each beat and the interval between beats down to the millisecond level. They also connected the ECG machine to a computer programmed to make sounds lasting only 80 to 180 milliseconds with each heartbeat.
In humans, even when the pulse is the most stable, there is actually a very small difference in how long each heartbeat takes. The researchers wanted to see if this variability changed participants’ perceptions of time.
Sure enough, shortly after the heartbeat shortened, the subject felt that the sound lasted longer than it actually did. The converse was also true, the longer the heartbeat, the shorter the tone felt. Responses to sounds were directly related to subtle changes in the heart’s rhythm, so the researchers found that our heartbeats have an even imperceptible effect on how we perceive the world, especially time. concluded that they are intricately related. They called these perceptual variations “temporary wrinkles.”
“The heartbeat is the rhythm our brain uses to tell us the passage of time, and it’s not linear, it’s always contracting and expanding,” said study co-author Cornell University’s Department of Psychology. Professor Adam K. Anderson of And at the University of Human Ecology.
“Even in the intervals between these moments, our sense of time is fluctuating,” he added. increase.”
A paper was published in a journal psychophysiology.
Source: Cornell University
