Our understanding of time is surprisingly fragile, bending and warping under the influence of altered states like emergencies, meditation, and psychedelics. The reasons why remain an enigma for science.
Key Points at a Glance
- Time Slows in Crises: Stressful moments often stretch time, allowing for rapid decision-making in life-or-death situations.
- Meditative Stillness: Deep meditation can evoke a sense of timelessness, offering profound states of relaxation.
- Psychedelic Experiences: Substances like LSD and ayahuasca can drastically alter time perception, creating sensations of infinite or fleeting moments.
What is time? Philosophers and physicists have long debated its nature, but for everyday human experience, time is the ticking metronome of our lives. That metronome, however, can falter dramatically during altered states of consciousness, causing minutes to feel like hours or days to vanish in a blur. Despite its universality, the underlying science of these distortions remains elusive.
People who have faced life-threatening situations—such as car accidents or falls—often recount vivid memories of time seeming to slow. This phenomenon, known as Time Expansion Experience (TEE), is thought to result from the brain’s heightened state of arousal. In such moments, the amygdala, a region involved in emotional processing, becomes hyperactive, and attention narrows to critical details, effectively stretching the perception of time.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, meditative states can induce a sense of timelessness. Practices such as mindfulness and transcendental meditation disrupt our usual sense of time’s passage, often described as a profound stillness or present awareness. Neurological studies suggest that this may result from altered activity in the brain’s default mode network (DMN), a collection of regions responsible for self-referential thoughts and temporal awareness.
Psychedelic compounds, including LSD, psilocybin, and ayahuasca, have long been associated with dramatic time distortions. Users frequently report experiencing loops of time, sensations of eternity, or moments that vanish in a flash. Research into these effects reveals that psychedelics disrupt the brain’s normal connectivity, particularly within the DMN. These substances may temporarily dismantle the mechanisms that anchor us to linear time, opening a window into a profoundly altered state of consciousness.
Despite decades of anecdotal and experimental research, the exact mechanisms behind these time distortions remain unclear. Some theories point to changes in neurotransmitter systems, particularly dopamine and serotonin, which are deeply involved in regulating time perception. Others suggest that altered connectivity between brain regions interferes with the internal clock mechanisms that govern our subjective experience of time.
Understanding how time perception shifts in altered states has profound implications for neuroscience, psychology, and even therapy. For example, psychedelics are being explored as treatments for depression and PTSD, where time distortions might play a therapeutic role. Similarly, the ability of meditation to alter time perception may contribute to its stress-reducing effects.
Ultimately, time distortion offers a fascinating glimpse into the brain’s inner workings, challenging our fundamental assumptions about how we experience the world. While we may not yet understand why these shifts occur, they remind us of the flexible, subjective nature of time itself.
