- In life-threatening situations, your brain encodes more memories, creating the illusion of time slowing.
- High-stress events increase sensory input and memory density, not actual time perception in the moment.
- Psychedelics disrupt predictive brain loops, leading to dramatic time distortions.
- Meditation and trauma both suppress the brain’s default time-keeping systems, altering perception.
- Neurological time perception is influenced heavily by dopamine, attention, and emotional states.
Consider this: imagine you are just moments away from a car accident. Suddenly, everything around you becomes eerily quiet. The world seems to stretch, with each movement exaggerated and every second extended. Later, you might insist that the moment lasted much longer than it actually could have. This strange feeling is known as “time expansion,” a curious effect often reported during emergencies or altered states of awareness. But is time truly slowing down, or is it simply a trick played by your brain?
What Are Altered States of Consciousness?
Altered states of consciousness (ASCs) are conditions where the typical limits and operations of conscious awareness experience notable changes. These shifts can vary from slight alterations in experience to significant disruptions of sensory, emotional, and cognitive processes. While we typically function in “baseline consciousness”—our normal waking state—various physical, psychological, and pharmacological factors can move us into ASCs.
Triggers for altered states are diverse and include
- Extreme Stress or Trauma: Near-death experiences, panic attacks, or crises can suddenly shift consciousness.
- Meditative and Mindfulness Practices: Deep focus can produce states of thoughtlessness, timelessness, and unity perception.
- Substances: Psychedelics like LSD, psilocybin, and dissociatives such as ketamine can significantly change perception.
- Sleep and Dreams: REM sleep and lucid dreaming naturally bring about non-ordinary consciousness.
Despite the different causes, ASCs share a common feature: they reconfigure how we experience reality, particularly time, space, and self-awareness. One of the most common changes during these states is a shift in time perception.
What Is ‘Time Expansion’?
Time expansion refers to the subjective feeling that time slows down during intense emotion, danger, or extreme focus. It is a part of wider altered states of consciousness and commonly occurs in
- Near-death experiences
- High-speed accidents or falls
- Combat and emergency response
- Psychedelic ceremonies
- Spiritual awakenings or intense meditation
People often describe these moments as being like a slow-motion film. Colors become more intense, sounds clearer, and thoughts remarkably fast. You vividly process many thoughts and sensations in what, objectively, is only a few seconds. The main question is: Does time actually slow down—or is our perception simply changed?
Importantly, studies suggest that this “expansion” is not a real-time occurrence but an illusion created when memories are formed. Let’s examine how and why that happens.
The Neuroscience Behind Time Perception
The brain’s sense of time is not located in a single “clock center” but is spread across various connected regions. This networked model of temporal perception relies on
- The Insular Cortex: Carries out internal bodily awareness and emotional integration.
- The Cerebellum: Coordinates motor control and timing at the microsecond level.
- The Basal Ganglia: Manages rhythm and interval timing.
- The Prefrontal Cortex: Handles attention, decision-making, and working memory.
These brain areas, along with the thalamus and supplementary motor areas, help in processing time in different durations—from milliseconds to seconds and minutes.
Dopamine—a neurotransmitter involved in reward, pleasure, and movement—has a key role in how fast or slow we perceive time. Increased dopamine levels have been found to “speed up” our internal clocks, making us underestimate how long something took. Low dopamine levels do the opposite. Other neuromodulators, like serotonin and norepinephrine, also have an effect on time perception depending on someone’s emotional and physiological state.
Thus, your brain does not “read” time like a watch—it constructs your experience of time based on sensory input, emotional value, memory encoding, and attentional focus.
A Brain on High Alert: Stress and Hyperawareness
In dangerous or highly stressful situations, the amygdala—the brain’s main threat detector—becomes highly active. This starts a series of physiological changes
- Release of norepinephrine and cortisol (stress hormones)
- Narrowed attention and a slowed sense of time
- Increased sensory awareness (enhanced vision/hearing)
- Activation of fight-or-flight responses
This state increases your sensory intake and speeds up your cognition. You might recall events unfolding frame by frame. However, Brookshire (2024) points out that “what you feel in the moment and what you later recall might not match.” In reality, you may not actually experience the slowed time during the event—only afterwards, as your brain retrospectively processes what happened.
This distinction is important. You are not truly living in slow motion; your brain just processes the memory in a different way.
The Memory Encoding Hypothesis
One main idea explaining time expansion is the memory encoding hypothesis. According to this model, the brain’s reaction to high-stress events is to increase the detail and amount of sensory data recorded.
Gruber et al. (2021) suggest that time may seem to stretch in retrospect because of the large amount of detailed memory encoding that happens in such incidents. The experience becomes densely packed with perceptual and emotional markers, making it feel much longer in hindsight.
Imagine your brain as a camera that normally works at 24 frames per second. In an emergency, it changes to 120 frames per second, capturing more detail and nuance. This detailed playback takes longer to mentally “review,” making you believe the incident spanned a greater time than it did.
This explanation is consistent with accounts from car crash survivors, who recall very detailed slow-motion sequences that far exceed the actual time.
Scientific Studies and Experiments Back It Up
Several important studies have looked into the nature of time perception under stress
- Stetson, Fiesta & Eagleman (2007): In a thrilling experiment, participants were dropped in freefall from a 150-foot tower wearing devices that flashed numbers faster than normal perception allows. Although subjects reported that the fall felt much longer than it actually was, they did not perform better on tasks requiring faster visual processing. The finding? Time did not slow down—the memory density increased.
- EEG and VR Simulations: New experiments combine immersive VR with electroencephalogram (EEG) recording to simulate intense situations or altered states. These studies show that while cognition in the moment does not speed up, the memory after the experience often feels longer because of dense sensory encoding.
Taken together, experimental evidence supports time expansion as a psychological illusion, rather than a literal slowing of time.
How Psychedelics Reset Your Inner Clock
People who use strong psychoactive substances like LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and DMT often report expanded or compressed senses of time. These altered states of consciousness are notable not only for their emotional intensity but also for their changes to temporal reality.
Common themes in reports include
- Time stopping or looping endlessly
- Seconds stretching into what feels like hours
- Loss of sequential thinking and time-tracking
From a neurobiological view, psychedelics increase cortical entropy, a measure of neural unpredictability and flexibility. Under their influence, the **default mode network (DMN)**—a collection of connected brain regions linked to self-awareness, narrative construction, and time integration—becomes less active.
Carhart-Harris et al. (2016) suggest that this entropy loosens the firm limits of normal consciousness, allowing time experiences that are otherwise impossible. The result is a breakdown of your brain’s typical predictive processing framework and, consequently, the timeline it usually keeps.
So, for psychedelic users, it is not time itself that is changing—it is the loss of structure that gives time meaning.
Time Warps in Meditation and Dreams
Experiences of time distortion do not only happen in emergencies or drug-induced states—meditation and dreaming also produce altered time perception. Regular meditators often report feelings of timelessness, while lucid dreamers describe full adventures happening in a few seconds of real-world time.
This is not surprising when you consider neuroimaging data. Deep meditation has been linked to
- Reduced DMN activity
- Increased connection between sensory and emotional processing centers
- Lowered physiological arousal
- Increased present-moment attention
Similarly, in dreams—especially REM sleep—the prefrontal cortex becomes less active, reducing our sense of linear time while emotion-processing areas like the amygdala become more engaged. This creates detailed, emotionally charged stories that feel long and meaningful, although they have occurred in short time periods.
Whether peaceful or nightmarish, these states show that time perception is ultimately rooted in brain state, not physics.
Why Dense Memories Feel Like Slow Motion
Looking back at emotionally intense episodes, people commonly misjudge how long they lasted. Why? Because those moments are cognitively and emotionally “thicker.”
Here is what happens during such episodes
- Increased Attention: Every detail is recorded.
- Increased Sensory Input: Multiple systems—from sight to hearing and proprioception—are more acute.
- Higher Emotional Value: The emotional weight of the experience makes memories more vivid.
- Atypical Brain Activity: The DMN is suppressed, reducing the narrative, time-tracking functions.
These factors combine to create memory traces that are much richer than usual. And when the brain later retrieves these memories, the density leads to the conclusion that the moment must have lasted longer than it did.
This may be why time moves more slowly when you are young and everything is new—and faster as you age and routines repeat.
Time Perception and Trauma
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) often involves recurrent, disturbing flashbacks. These are not ordinary memory recollections—they are vivid, often multisensory re-experiences that carry the emotional and temporal distortions present at the time of trauma.
Patients report
- Feeling as if the traumatic event “just happened”
- Re-experiencing moments in slow, painful clarity
- Difficulty telling past from present during an episode
Recent trauma therapies such as EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), Somatic Experiencing, and Time Perspective Therapy aim to help individuals reframe their internal timelines and reduce the overwhelming “now-ness” of past events.
Understanding shifts in time perception sheds light on the persistence, and possible healing, of trauma-related disrupted consciousness.
Can We Train for Crisis Time?
Yes—and some of the most skilled professionals already do. Soldiers, police officers, emergency medics, pilots, and athletes often train using simulations that copy high-stress, time-critical environments. The goal is to develop conditioned responses that reduce perceptual distortion and promote clarity.
Methods include
- Tactical breathing and biofeedback to manage physiological arousal
- Sensory scanning to override tunnel vision
- Time sensitivity drills to maintain real-time processing
- VR simulations to engage decision-making under pressure
Training the brain to stay grounded under pressure does not remove time perception distortions—but it does reduce panic-related misinterpretations and improves performance.
What’s Coming Next: Research and Rewiring Time
Time perception has become an important area of interest in neuroscience, psychology, and AI-human interface development. The next area of focus is on real-time brain mapping techniques that can precisely chart moment-to-moment changes in perception, attention, and memory as people undergo simulated time expansions.
Possible innovations include
- VR-based trauma reprocessing using manipulated temporal cues
- AI-guided therapy that tracks time distortion indicators
- Neurofeedback that changes dynamically to modulate time perception disorders
- Cognitive enhancement tools to regulate time awareness in ADHD and anxiety
Understanding how and why time seems to stretch or compress in altered states of consciousness could greatly change how we handle everything from trauma to productivity.
Time Isn’t Slower—Your Brain Works Faster
Despite the feeling of slowed time, research strongly suggests that time perception distortions are illusions created by a brain that is working at its peak. In crisis, under psychedelics, during meditation, or through trauma, your brain increases its attention to detail, deepens memory encoding, and loosens its normal narrative limits—all combining to change your perception of duration.
You are not living longer moments—you are living denser moments.
The human brain, it turns out, does not just track time; it builds it. And like any good architect, it can bend the rules of space and time when needed.
Have you ever felt time slow down? What were you experiencing at the moment? Share your experience in the comments—your story may help someone else understand how their mind perceives time under pressure.
References
- Brookshire, B. (2024). Interview insights suggest emotional salience contributes to retrospective over-estimation of crisis duration.
- Carhart-Harris, R. L., Leech, R., Hellyer, P. J., Shanahan, M., Feilding, A., Tagliazucchi, E., … & Nutt, D. (2016). The entropic brain: A theory of conscious states informed by neuroimaging research with psychedelic drugs. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, 20.
- Gruber, R., Block, R. A., Montemayor, C., & Yarrow, K. (2021). The density of memory encoding increases in high-stress situations, leading to retrospective time expansion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 25(12), 1060–1072.
- Stetson, C., Fiesta, M., & Eagleman, D. M. (2007). Does time really slow down during a frightening event? PLoS One, 2(12), e1295.
