4 replies to this topic

[OpaqueMind]

You know the feeling, when you drink a few too many cups of coffee and everything around you seems to slow down. Manifest 10-fold on more potent stimulants like amphetamines. Likewise but reversely so under the influence of depressants - time seems to speed up.
I've wondered for a while about the underlying neural mechanisms behind subjective time experience and its possible link to relativistic time dilation.
For those that do not know, relativistic time dilation is basically this - As a body's velocity approaches the constant C (speed of light in a vacuum) it will slow down through time, proportional to the percentage of C it has reached; so as an object travels faster through the spatial planes, it slows down through the temporal plane.
Now, when you take a stimulant, the number of neurotransmitters in the brains synapses increase, increasing the speed at which a signal crosses the synapse, generally increasing the speed of thought. But why would this slow down subjective time perception? I think maybe it is because the signals travelling faster through your brain experience relativistic time dilation!
Alas, I cannot verify this with statistics, even if I knew the exact rates of synapse-crossing speeds on different drugs and measured that against their time distorting effects, time itself is experienced subjectively and so even if I tried to measure the difference in the flow of time it would be impossible!
Have you ever heard of this as a potential mechanism for time experience - the subjective speed of time flow is regulated by the speed at which neuronal signals are sent and received?
It sounds like a possible hypothesis, especially considering the speed at which thought processes are mediated which is very fast because they are electro-chemical (for RTD to occur non-negligibly (in relation to Newton's equations) the speeds must surpass about 20% the speed of light).
What I lack is knowing anything about the relative speeds of neural transmissions and how they are affected by an abundance/lack of neurotransmitters. If the differences are very small then this theory is KAPUT.
So I am looking for any input about the relative rates of change in neurotransmission under the influence of both stimulants and depressants.
Maybe this is in the wrong place, its kindof Physics but also Biology so I put it here.
Hope somebody has some ideas on this, thanks

[Evolutionary]

In my opinion, the hypothesis is likely to be true. I've read in a book by Rita Carter that the perception of the rate of flow of time is dependent on brain cycles(literally loops, or circuits, between several points in the brain), correlated with dopamine.

LOL, I'm good at speculations but not so good at follow-through with them.

Posts from you are interesting-the one on the complex lifeforms across the space-time continuum, and now this.

Edited by MaxLife, 16 September 2010 - 06:02 AM.

[hotamali]

I don't know about this, I always subjective time dilation was a function of thought speed; ie if you are more aware of your surroundings and are in the moment things seem to slow down (this is what alot of drugs do.)

[Luna]

Why is this in physics? Maybe biology or computing...

Should be obvious that if your brain function is increased then you can process more at X time and therefore time will appear "slower" because you have "more time" (you actually have the same time but can do more in it).

If the brain slows down, things should be speeding up or flashing away, this is because you have no "time" to process it. Actually, you work slower and lose detail, you don't lose time.

[OpaqueMind]

Why is this in physics? Maybe biology or computing...

Should be obvious that if your brain function is increased then you can process more at X time and therefore time will appear "slower" because you have "more time" (you actually have the same time but can do more in it).

If the brain slows down, things should be speeding up or flashing away, this is because you have no "time" to process it. Actually, you work slower and lose detail, you don't lose time.

This is in Physics because it involves relativity, and the biology section seems to focus more on immortality issues whereas the physics section seems more general, so I posted it here because I thought I would get better answers.

So you think that the experience of time is inextricably linked to the amount of information the brain processes in a given time? By deduction from your theory, time would go by infinitely fast in a perfect state of meditation (of no conscious thought), but this is not the case.

It would also mean that in a state of complete sensory deprivation, drugs would not affect your time perception (if time perception is based only on the amount of incoming information). I cannot attest to whether this has been observed but it sounds very unlikely.

It makes sense to say that you can process more at X time, but by the same logic it makes just as much sense to say that you process a standard amount in less than X time. Problem is that neither of these is a falsifiable hypothesis. You speculate just as I have but you type as if this is the undeniable truth.