Does Your Heartbeat Shape Your Sense of Time? | Irena Arslanova | TED

Irena Arslanova, a cognitive neuroscientist, introduces her research into how we perceive time and why it's a fundamental aspect of our lives. She highlights the malleable nature of time perception, noting how it can distort based on our emotional state, focus, or the novelty of an experience, either slowing down or speeding up. She poses questions about the function and control of these temporal distortions.

Working at the Lab of Action and Body at Royal Holloway, University of London, Arslanova explains the embodied approach to understanding the brain. She emphasizes that the brain's primary role is to keep the body alive and functioning, requiring it to perceive not only the external world but also the internal state of the body, a process called interoception. She uses our perception of the heart as a prime example of interoception.

Arslanova elaborates on the dual role of the heart: controlling bodily functions and actively shaping brain activity. She explains that sensory neurons in the heart send signals to the brain during contraction, priming it for action, and remain silent during relaxation, shifting the brain into a perceptual mode. This creates a constant rhythmic dance between the brain and the heart, influencing our readiness for action or perception.

Given the heart's influence on perception, Arslanova's team investigated whether it also affects time perception. They conducted a study with 67 volunteers, using an ECG machine to present stimuli precisely in sync with their heartbeats. Participants judged the duration of various stimuli, allowing researchers to observe if the heart's momentary state causally influenced their perception of time.

The study revealed a significant finding: stimuli presented during heart contraction were perceived as shorter than those presented between beats, during relaxation. This indicates that the momentary state of the heart causes time to contract and expand within each heartbeat, providing scientific evidence that time perception is an embodied experience, molded by the body, not just constructed by the brain.

Arslanova discusses the implications of these findings, suggesting that heart-driven time distortions could be linked to how heartbeats affect the brain's sensory and movement centers. She hypothesizes that our distorted sense of time might function to shift us between active and perceptual modes—contracting time for action and expanding it for perception. She concludes by suggesting that consciously influencing our internal bodily state, like taking a deep breath, can alter our experience of time and broaden our perception.