Human perception of time depending on age?

Question

From what I can tell and what thus far all people with whom I discussed this subject confirmed is that time appears to "accelerate" as we age.Digging a little, most explanations I found basically reduced this to two reasons:- As we age physically, a time frame of constant length becomes ever smaller in contrast to the time we spent living- As we age socially, we are burdened with an increasing amount of responsibility and thus an increasing influx of information which impairs our perception of the presentTo be honest, neither sounds entirely convincing to me because:- In my perception "local time" (short time frames that I don't even bother to measure on the scale of my lifetime) is also accelerating. Just as an example: When I wait for the bus, time goes by reasonably fast as opposed to my childhood tortures of having to wait an eternity for those five minutes to pass.- Even after making a great effort to cut myself off from society and consciously trying to focus on the moment, the perceived speed of time didn't really change. (Although I did have a great time :))Which leads me to a simple question (and a few corollaries):- Am I just in denial of two perfectly plausible and sufficient explanations, or are there actual biological effects (e.g. changes in brain chemistry) in place, that cause (or at least significantly influence) this?- Is there a mechanism, that "stretches out" time for the young brain so that weight of an immense boredom forces it to benefit from its learning ability, while it "shrinks" time as the brain "matures" and must now act based on what it has learned, which often involves a lot of patience?- If there is such a mechanism, are there any available means to counter it? (not sure I'd really want to, but I'd like to know whether I could)

Answer 1

Unfortunately, there are no such mechanisms that you suggest. However, there is still a lot that we do not know about the brain. Someday, this could change. But for now, we have to go with the two reasons that you have suggested.

Answer 2

I am not familiar with human perceptions of time, but I can offer some insight from a biological standpoint. Animals which seem to move together in groups have always been a hot topic in biology and animal behavior. One of the best studied is the European Starling, which form flocks that undulate through the sky as one whole, like an aerial ballet.

Traditionally people have had all sorts of ideas of how they did this, often involving some type of telepathy. The actual answer to these air shows, however, is much simpler. Starlings have extremely high reaction times; what seems like a flash of movement to us they can evaluate and respond to. In short, they experience time slower in that moment, and so react to the movement of their neighbors to stay in their place in the flock.

Now for Starlings and other animals, reaction times depend on the neurons feeding the reaction and the synapses present. From a human standpoint, I'm not sure where that would fit in, but I hope this provides some information for your pondering.