The role of the heart in the experience of time has been long theorized but empirical evidence is scarce. In new research, scientists from Cornell University and the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health examined the interaction between the momentary experience of subsecond intervals and heartbeat.
“Our research builds evidence that the heart is one of the brain’s important timekeepers and plays a fundamental role in our sense of time passing — an idea contemplated since ancient times,” said Cornell University’s Professor Adam Anderson, senior author on the study.
“Time is a dimension of the Universe and a core basis for our experience of self.”
“Our research shows that the moment-to-moment experience of time is synchronized with, and changes with, the length of a heartbeat.”
“Time perception typically has been tested over longer intervals, when research has shown that thoughts and emotions may distort our sense time, perhaps making it fly or crawl.”
“Such findings tend to reflect how we think about or estimate time, rather than our direct experience of it in the present moment.”
To investigate that more direct experience, Professor Anderson and his colleagues asked if our perception of time is related to physiological rhythms, focusing on natural variability in heart rates.
The cardiac pacemaker ‘ticks’ steadily on average, but each interval between beats is a tiny bit longer or shorter than the preceding one, like a second hand clicking at different intervals.
The study authors harnessed that variability in a novel experiment that involved 45 participants (18 to 21 years old, with no history of heart trouble).
The volunteers were monitored with electrocardiography (ECG), measuring heart electrical activity at millisecond resolution.
The ECG was linked to a computer, which enabled brief tones lasting 80-180 milliseconds to be triggered by heartbeats.
The participants reported whether tones were longer or…
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