"How time flies".
Those who look at their driver's license photo are familiar with the expression.
Our elders even use it regularly, sometimes accessorizing it with “like you grew up”.
How to explain this disturbing sensation?
Why, from the forties, the years are transformed for some into minutes, in a simple blink of an eyelid?
Cognitive aging
Since the 1970s, many scientific works have sought to understand this mysterious phenomenon, tells us the neuropsychologist Sylvie Chokron (1).
One of the most promising avenues relates to cognitive aging.
“With age, the speed of execution is more affected;
we think, we act, we solve problems more slowly,” explains the specialist.
Blame it on myelin, this white substance protecting our neurons, which becomes less efficient over the years and causes less good circulation of nerve impulses.
Result ?
Each task takes us longer than usual to complete, which
ultimately
reduces the total number of daily tasks performed.
Clearly, if by looking at our schedule, we do not reach the usual quota, we come out with the impression that time flies faster.
“And by generating a kind of race for utility every minute, the current world of work will only reinforce this gap among the latest generations,” adds Maël Lemoine, philosopher in medical sciences (2).
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When the internal clock goes wrong
As we age, the body is also more sensitive to lack of light exposure, which contributes, among other factors, to disturbing the internal clock, going so far as to modify the sleep-wake cycle, and in fact, the perception of time. .
"Scientific experiments carried out underground, in particular in a cave, confirm that a prolonged period in the dark, without the notion of hours or days, increases the loss of temporal landmarks and the desynchronization of sleep", specifies Sylvie Chokron.
The rarer the events that mark our attention, the more they reduce our perception of time.
Maël Lemoine, philosopher in medical sciences
Body and brain are also more sensitive to lack of sleep.
With age, the desire to sleep becomes more significant during the day, and if we succumb to it excessively, these naps leave us with the feeling that the day has passed more quickly.
“When this perception is distorted to its extreme, as is the case with neurodegenerative diseases, this impacts not only the biological rhythm but also our satiety and our general behavior.
These elderly subjects sometimes do not know what year we are in, ”says neuropsychologist Sylvie Chokron.
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A look at memories
Obviously, the acceleration (or slowing down) of the perception of temporal space remains subjective, insist the specialists.
Everything depends on the state of mind in which one carries out activities, and the emotions that are granted to them.
Thus, an anxious character will see his days pass at high speed, while a person plagued by melancholy, boredom, will be more chomping at the bit.
“The rarer the events that mark our attention, the more they reduce our perception of time,” adds the philosopher Maël Lemoine.
To understand why sensation lives in us, we must also, and unsurprisingly, turn to the time that separates us from death, according to the teacher-researcher.
"It can make the elderly subjects concerned realize that their time to live is limited, producing a feeling of urgency, of anxiety, which will inevitably accelerate the perception of time", summarizes Maël Lemoine.
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How to press the brake, especially if the hands of the watch give us sweats?
As the specialists explained to us, our perception of time is based on the number of meaningful experiences we create over a given period of time.
Starting from this principle, the neuropsychologist Sylvie Chokron invites us to give more meaning to our actions and to the memories left by them.
"Writing is a good way to project a moment, to live it and then to remember it," she suggests.
The more we live in consciousness these moments, the longer they will seem to us a posteriori.
(1)
A day in Anna's brain
, by Sylvie Chokron, ed.
Eyrolles, 240 pages, €16.
(2)
Little philosophy of wrinkles
, Maël Lemoine, ed Hermann, 150 p., €9.90.