Pain dilates time perception

We have all experienced that time seems stretched during unpleasant situations. While there is evidence of subjective time overestimation when perceiving external unpleasant stimuli, no study has measured the dilation of time when individuals experience an unpleasant situation in their own body. Her...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2017-11, Vol.7 (1), p.15682-6, Article 15682
Main Authors: Rey, Amandine E., Michael, George A., Dondas, Corina, Thar, Marvin, Garcia-Larrea, Luis, Mazza, Stéphanie
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/378/2649/1723
631/477/2811
Arousal
Humanities and Social Sciences
multidisciplinary
Pain
Pain perception
Perception
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Temporal perception
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Summary:We have all experienced that time seems stretched during unpleasant situations. While there is evidence of subjective time overestimation when perceiving external unpleasant stimuli, no study has measured the dilation of time when individuals experience an unpleasant situation in their own body. Here we measured the time dilation induced by a painful homeostatic deviance using temporal bisection task. We show that being in pain leads to an expansion of subjective time whereby a stronger increase in pain perception relative to non-painful stimulation leads to a stronger time-estimate distortion. Neurophysiological studies suggest that time estimation and the perception of self might share a common neural substrate. We propose that, along with bodily arousal and attentional capture, the enhancement of self-awareness may be critical to support dilated subjective time when experiencing pain. As other homeostatic deviances, pain may induce a focus on ourselves contributing to the impression that “time stands still”.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-017-15982-6