Scientists discover how to make time pass faster

Animal testing: Scientists trained two rhesus macaques for the experiment

A new understanding of how the brain processes time could one day allow scientists to tweak an individual's sense of timing.

New research suggests timekeeping in the brain is decentralised, with different neural circuits having their own timing mechanisms for specific activities.

Not only does it raise the possibility of artificially manipulating time perceptions, but the finding could also explain why our sense of time changes in different conditions - such as when we are having fun or are under stress.

Two researchers from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis trained two rhesus macaques to perform tasks requiring them to move their eyes between two dots in regular one- second intervals, New Scientist reported. Despite having no external cues to help them keep track of time, after three months the monkeys had learned to move their eyes between the dots with average intervals of 1.003 and 0.0973 seconds respectively. Using electrodes, the researchers then recorded brain activity across 100 neurons in the monkeys' lateral intraparietal cortex - the brain region associated with eye movement - as they performed the task.

They found that the activity of these neurons decreased between each eye movement in a regular way that allowed them to predict when the next movement would occur.

A slower rate of decrease in the activity of the neurons corresponded with a macaque overestimating the length of a second, while a faster rate of decrease meant they would move their eyes before the time was up. The results of the experiment suggest that scientists may one day be able to manipulate the subjective experience of the passage of time by tinkering with the neural connections that indicate its passage in our brains.