Did the COVID lockdown alter our perception of time?
Tempus Fugit a Sign on the former Dyson’s jewellers, Briggate, Leeds
Source: Tim Green from Bradford, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Several years ago, during a discussion about possible studies students in my lab might undertake, a student told the rest of us about watching someone heating up coffee in the microwave while standing next to the machine, urging it to go faster. She wondered if the advent of labor-saving devices like the microwave and the computer had affected our perception of time. We designed a study to see. We gave our participants a brief survey assessing daily computer use. Then, we asked them to judge the duration of a series of intervals ranging from 3 to 27 seconds. We found that computer use was significantly and negatively correlated with the size of the errors made in the time estimation task, meaning that the more time was spent using the computer, the smaller the errors made on the time estimation task were. We also found that feelings of time urgency, education level, and age were also significantly correlated with accuracy (Blatchley et al., 2007).
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We all have a great deal of practice in estimating how long it takes to carry out a task or how long a particular event has taken or will take the next time we encounter it. There are several theories of how the brain is engaged in the perception of time. The current models tend to use an idea similar to the water clock used by Galileo in his studies of gravity. Steady drops of water from a bucket accumulate in another container over time. The more water in the accumulator, the more time had passed. Accumulator models of time perception propose that nerve impulses from “pacemaker” cells (cells firing impulses at a steady rate over time) accumulate, starting with the beginning of the event we are timing. The more impulses that accumulate, the more time has passed. We store the information about the number of impulses accumulated in our memories. We can compare the memory of previous durations with the current and ongoing accumulation of impulses to help us determine how much time has passed.
The search for where in the brain time perception might take place is ongoing. Several different brain regions appear involved in understanding different durations of time. Hayashi and Ivey (2020) have been investigating neurons in the hippocampus (a region heavily involved in memory) as well as in two regions of the parietal lobe, the inferior parietal lobule and the supramarginal gyrus or SMG. Neurons in these regions seem involved in perceiving the duration of short periods on the order of milliseconds. Cells in the parietal lobe are “tuned” to different durations, meaning they respond best to specific time durations, some short and some longer. Hayashi and Ivey found that exposing these cells to a specific stimulus of a specific duration as an adaptor exhausted these cells so that their firing rate, even to their preferred time duration, was reduced. This adaptation resulted in an overestimation of the duration of a test stimulus if the adapting stimulus was of a short duration and an underestimation if the adapting stimulus was long. As if the perception of time, in general, was extended when the neurons tuned to a short time period were temporarily not responding, leaving only the neurons sensitive to longer periods still able to respond—and vice versa.
The Inferior Parietal Lobule and the Supramarginal gyrus (SMG) in the left hemisphere. The SMG would be the leftmost portion of the parietal lobule, along the postcentral sulcus.
Source: Gray, vectorized by Mysid, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Hayashi and Ivey propose using their adaptation methodology to study the effects of contextual factors like previous experience, recent history, motion, and the number of stimuli that need to be attended to on time perception.
For example, a different part of the brain, called the suprachiasmatic nucleus or SCN, located in the hypothalamus, might be involved in the perception of longer periods of time, this time on the order of days. The SCN cells are known to be part of the master clock in the brain that modulates our behavior across the span of a day—our circadian rhythms. These SCN cells also respond to social stimuli. Fernandez, Pereira, et al. (2021) found that activity in the SCN of mice, a species normally active at night and quiet during the day, was significantly reduced when the opportunity for social interaction between mice was removed by individually housing the animals.
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The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) is the central circadian pacemaker. The SCN is located in the hypothalamus and is regulated by light signals from the eye.
Source: Robin M. Voigt, Ph.D., Christopher B. Forsyth, Ph.D., and Ali Keshavarzian, M.D., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
It’s hard to ask a mouse how much time she or he thinks has passed, but the opportunity to ask humans who have had their social interactions reduced has recently become available. During the COVID-19 pandemic, our interactions with our friends, families, and coworkers were severely limited. Velasco, Perroy, Gurchani, and Casati (2024) explored the effects of social isolation on human time perception. They used a questionnaire to assess the effects of isolation on social and temporal disorientation during the lockdown portion of the pandemic in France in May and June of 2021. Among other things, their questionnaire assessed subjective feelings of the passage of time. Not too surprisingly, if you remember your feelings about being “locked down” during the pandemic, the perception of time was significantly affected by the social isolation their participants felt. Many of their participants “experienced time as slow and elongated” during isolation. Time before the pandemic (temporal distance) felt “further away” from the participants, a result also seen in studies in other countries. Participants also had difficulty remembering the order of events from before the pandemic began and had trouble recognizing the day of the week. This temporal disorientation also extended to imaging events after the lockdown was rescinded.
The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) is the central circadian pacemaker. The SCN is located in the hypothalamus and is regulated by light signals from the eye.
Source: Robin M. Voigt, Ph.D., Christopher B. Forsyth, Ph.D., and Ali Keshavarzian, M.D., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The responses of specific sets of neural cells were not measured in this study, but we might speculate that disruption of cells in the brain would also be seen after prolonged social isolation. Let’s not suffer another pandemic to find out, though.
References
Blatchley, B., Dixon, R., Purvis, A., Slack, J., Thomas, T., Weber, N., & Wiley, C. (2007). Computer use and the perception of time. North American Journal of Psychology, 9(1), 131–142.
Fernandes, P., Pereira, L. M., Horta, N. A. C., Cardoso, T. S. R., Coimbra, C. C., Szawka, R. E., Pereira, G. S., & Poletini, M. O. (2021). Social interaction masking contributes to changes in the activity of the suprachiasmatic nucleus and impacts on circadian rhythms. Physiology & Behavior, 237, 113420. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2021.113420
Hayashi, M.J., and Ivry, R.B. (2020). Duration selectivity in right parietal cortex reflects the subjective experience of time. The Journal of Neuroscience, 40(40):7749–7758.
Velasco, P.F., Perroy, B., Gurchani, U., and Casati, R. (2024). Social and temporal disorientation during the Covid-19 pandemic: An analysis of 3306 responses to a quantitative questionnaire. British Journal of Psychology, 00, 1 – 22, DOI: 10.1111/bjop.12704.
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Publish date : 2024-06-28 20:41:07
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