Time’s Secrets Unveiled: Study Challenges How We Perceive Time

Our brain measures time by counting experiences, not by following a strict chronological order.

A new study by a team of UNLV researchers suggests that there’s a lot of truth to the trope “time flies when you’re having fun.”

In their study, recently published in the journal Current Biology, the researchers discovered that our perception of time is based on the number of experiences we have, not on an internal clock. Additionally, they found that increasing speed or output during an activity appears to affect how our brains perceive time.

“We tell time in our own experience by things we do, things that happen to us,” said James Hyman, a UNLV associate professor of psychology and the study’s senior author. “When we’re still and we’re bored, time goes very slowly because we’re not doing anything or nothing is happening. On the contrary, when a lot of events happen, each one of those activities is advancing our brains forward. And if this is how our brains objectively tell time, then the more that we do and the more that happens to us, the faster time goes.”