Why does time seem to slow down when something seriously threatens us?

Maybe adrenaline makes a person focus?

This would indicate that it’s not truly some cognitive event but rather more densely packed memories due to the perceived danger.

Another article that states “this warping of time apparently does not result from the brain speeding up from adrenaline when in danger. Instead, this feeling seems to be an illusion, scientists now find.”

Another

” Research conducted by David Eagleman has suggested that time does not actually run in slow motion for a person during a life-threatening event,” Ya think? LOL!

I kind of think time isn’t slowing down. We’re speeding up.

@Dutchess_III What’s the difference? Isn’t it all about perception?

The take away from the studies is that our brain doesn’t work faster, we just lay down more memories because of the intensity of the experience, making it seem like like time slowed.

I meant we speed up literally. We think faster we move faster. Time isn’t affected at all.

But we don’t. We don’t think faster, we don’t move faster.

How do you know that? I just disagree. We react faster than we do in times of calm. If we need to run, adrenalin would allow you to run faster and longer than you normally can, at least for a while.

I think it’s that the “fight-or-flight” response heightens our senses, making us hyper-aware; thus the intensity of the sensory input and its perceived threat allows us to micromanage those moments in ways that we won’t when we’re more passively going through our day.

This is how I have experienced the emergency situations I’ve been in – I notice more minute details in the environment, which allows me to more precisely plan a course of action – it definitely feels slower within the experience only because we normally don’t imagine we could do all that so quickly. As a result of the floodgates of sensory input being opened, we ‘lay down more memories’.

It speeds up massively for me whenever i’m threatened by a wasp, can’t see me for dust as I run like a bastard, whirling my arms as I go…I swear i’ll take flight next time.

Well put @hearkat. We’re “moving” faster so time seems slower in comparison.

You are such a baby @ucme!

Your point being?

I will protect you, baby. :)

Time just moved very slowly.

You are getting very sleepy. And wasps are landing on your face and you don’t mind.

It’s December there are no wasps you mad woman!

I told you I’d take care of them for you!

Yes it does. When I get a huge dose of adrenaline my brain starts flying. It goes at light speed.

I think it is focus and memory, those make sense to me. Focus is also like thinking faster. We really cannot think of more than one thing at once, when we multitask we actually are quickly changing from one thought to another and then back again. If we are in danger our total focus is on that and so I think it feels like time has slowed a little. Being fully aware of what is going on around us, being on our toes so to speak, tends to etch into our memory. Unfortunately. It isn’t that we necessarily remember more accurately, but trauma can write onto many parts of our brain and I have seen information on how memory during a bad incident and then how we remember things immediately following can affect how we psychologically handle the scare post trauma.

I’m going to send the Q to nikipedia. She will be a wealth of information I am sure.

I remember when my son was about 3. I was doing yard work and I glanced up and around to check on the kids. I saw Chris, and I froze and exploded at the same time. He was standing on his Big Wheels trike, in our concrete driveway, stretching up and up and up trying to reach the latch to the back gate. That tableau is burned in my brain—seeing clearly that he was off center, leaning outward with one hand on the gate, and stretching uuuup with the other, and then time slowed down. I set off at a dead run, but I felt like I was running through molasses. I don’t remember actually seeing him go down, which is probably a good thing. It was horrible, I’m sure! He caught himself with his chin, blood all over. First time he ever got stitches. But not the last.

Yup. My son’s first set of stitches came to mind as I pondered this question. He had just turned 2. I was sitting on the front stoop of my mom’s house looking at a wedding album of a girl I grew up with that her mom had brought over. He came excitedly running across the porch, tripped on an uneven spot and pitched forward toward the concrete steps – sssslllllooooow-mmmmoooo – I can still see him falling forward, but not being able to get my hands out to catch him and watching his face hit the corner of the steps right between his eyes (an inch left or right and he could’ve easily lost an eye). We scoop him up and blood is squirting straight out in time with his pulse – he’d hit an artery. I heard myself say, “major blood” and hopped up to get clean dishrags and ice to put on it. 20+ years and 5 sets of stitches (among several other medical emergencies) and he doesn’t remember, nor is there much of a scar… but the memory is as fresh in my mind as if it were yesterday. Amazing how it works.

The only time I didn’t have a slow-down was my most recent (and worst) accident. Traffic stopped short on the interstate and the two vans in front of me swerved left and right to avoid collision, so I stayed straight. The huge pickup behind my Mini Cooper couldn’t stop as fast and he caught my right rear corner which sent me into a 180° spin, and I thought that would be it. Next thing I knew, I was upside-down hollering, “Holy Fuck!” because the median was very muddy from all the melting snow, so the right-side tires stuck in the mud and inertia took the rest of the car over. Once I was upside-down the slo-mo kicked in, but because I thought I’d just spin and stop, the onset of the roll caught me completely by surprise.

Scary!

Reading your response to your son’s injury….running for dish towels and ice….told me it was 20 some years ago. That was my reaction too, to get it under control before we went in for stitches. I think today they’d call 911 before anything else!