Slow motion perception

Slow motion perception is a postulated mental state wherein time seems to be slowed down. People experiencing life-threatening situations sometimes report that time seemed to have slowed down.

Research conducted by David Eagleman established that time does not actually slow down for a person during a life-threatening event but, rather, it is only a retrospective assessment that brings about such a conclusion. He measured time perception during free-fall by strapping palm-top computers to subjects' wrists and having them perform psychophysical experiments as they fall. By measuring their speed of information intake, he concluded that participants did not have increased temporal resolution during the fall but, because their memories are more densely packed during a frightening situation, the event merely seems to have taken longer.

There is no reference of slow motion perception in books prior to the industrial revolution. After the industrial revolution, when vehicles for faster transportation were made available, people who underwent car or motorbike accidents reported that they perceived time slowing down or stretching just before and during the accidents. For a person standing on the road watching the accident, the perceived duration of the accident may have been a fraction of a second but for the person undergoing the accident, the perceived duration of the accident can stretch to several seconds.

There is a traditional model that tries to explain the mechanism of time perception: when there is an accident or unexpected events, the brain concentrates more on information processing, and the rate at which it processes information increases. Since the rate goes up, the brain perceives longer time due to concentrated information in the interval.

However, Terao et al. suggested that the amount of energy expended by neurons decides the duration. According to Terao et al., the duration of accident gets longer because neurons exert a lot of energy in a short interval.

According to Steve Taylor, senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Metropolitan University and author of Making Time book, clock time may be about minutes and hours but real time is down to how we experience it and it differs from person to person. For instance, during high-stress situations, such as an accident, the brain receives massive amounts of data to process which alters the brain's perception of time. This is believed to be an evolutionary mechanism adapted by the brain to increase human survival rates. Therefore, during an accident a person can react quickly and make a decision in a short period of time.

A recent research model proposes that the perception of space and time undergoes strong distortions during rapid saccadic eye movements. The expectation of perceived motion is necessary for anticipatory slow eye movements.

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