Science Alert brings us (well, those of us who are working out) one step closer to moving like the wind through a world of living statues with research from the UK and the Netherlands that shows exercise directly affects the perception of time, speeding up our reactions by making everything else seem slowed down:
Led by Andrew Mark Edwards from Canterbury Christ Church University in the UK, the team conducted experiments involving 33 male and female active adults who were asked to guess when a 30-second time period was up, without the help of a clock, only their own internal timekeeper.
At rest, participants thought 30 seconds was up slightly later than the actual ticking clock. In other words, time felt like it was ‘flying’ by.
But when participants hopped on a stationary bike for a 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) time trial, that perception grew distorted. Half a minute on the bike felt roughly 8 percent longer, on average, than what the clock said.
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The study of the human perception of time is called chronoception, and scientists have found that age, emotions, drugs, exercise, and body temperature can all alter that internal timekeeper in different ways.
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You can read more of the time-perception study here, in Brain and Behaviour.