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LSD Changes Something About the Way People Perceive Time, Even At Microdoses (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tonic: The perception of time is a fundamental process of the brain, linked tightly to attention, emotions, memory, psychiatric and neurological disorders, and even consciousness -- but while scientists have been anecdotally noting how drugs can change time perception for decades, very few have been able to address the question rigorously with tightly designed studies. Cognitive neuroscientist Devin Terhune says he's been interested in understanding the neurochemical mechanisms involved in the distortions in the perception of time, and these drugs are one way to do that. Psychedelics act on specific pathways and chemicals in the brain, and if they also change the perception of time, we could learn exactly how it happens. At the end of November, Terhune and his co-authors published a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study in Psychopharmacology on the effects of microdoses of LSD on people's perception of time. They found that even at small doses, LSD seems to change the way people interpret time, though the specifics of how and when are still to be determined.
In the new work, 48 healthy people were split up into four groups. One group got a placebo, and the other three received different small doses of LSD: 5, 10, or 20 micrograms. Then, they did what's called a temporal reproduction task. In this task, you see something on a screen for a certain amount of time -- in the study it was a blue circle -- and are asked to remember and recreate how long you saw it. The participants were shown a blue circle for periods of time from 800 milliseconds all the way up to 4,000 milliseconds, in increments of 400 milliseconds. Terhune and his colleagues looked to see how accurate the different groups of people were in reproducing those intervals, and found that the people in the LSD groups tended to hold down the space bar for significantly longer periods of time than the placebo condition. The researchers call this "over-reproduction." "Terhune says that they saw these changes in time perception without any major conscious effects from the drug," the report adds. "They asked people to report if they felt anything from taking the LSD, like perceptual distortions, unusual thoughts, if they felt high, or if it affected their concentration. There were a couple of weak effects, but statistically, the change in time perception happened independent of any subjective influence of the drug."
In the new work, 48 healthy people were split up into four groups. One group got a placebo, and the other three received different small doses of LSD: 5, 10, or 20 micrograms. Then, they did what's called a temporal reproduction task. In this task, you see something on a screen for a certain amount of time -- in the study it was a blue circle -- and are asked to remember and recreate how long you saw it. The participants were shown a blue circle for periods of time from 800 milliseconds all the way up to 4,000 milliseconds, in increments of 400 milliseconds. Terhune and his colleagues looked to see how accurate the different groups of people were in reproducing those intervals, and found that the people in the LSD groups tended to hold down the space bar for significantly longer periods of time than the placebo condition. The researchers call this "over-reproduction." "Terhune says that they saw these changes in time perception without any major conscious effects from the drug," the report adds. "They asked people to report if they felt anything from taking the LSD, like perceptual distortions, unusual thoughts, if they felt high, or if it affected their concentration. There were a couple of weak effects, but statistically, the change in time perception happened independent of any subjective influence of the drug."
I wonder how the effects compare to Heptapod B, for changing time perception.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
It's because they tested using their eyes as the sensor. It's common knowledge that LSD has a side effect of having longer lasting optical impressions, aka "tracers". That doesnt mean their sense of time was actually affected. They really did "see" it that long.
Way to tell anyone who has ever done LSD what they already know.
It's a drug, it fucks with your brain. How profound is it that effects your sense of time perception? Not at all.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
It's not just LSD. Music can have this effect too. For that matter, almost anything. . . ever been to a boring presentation that seemed to drag on for days ?
How is this news? In 2000 I took 6 tabs and we somehow stumbled across the South Park movie on TV. It lasted for eight hours and our chests hurt from laughing.
Acid makes 5 minutes feel like an hour. Did that need studying?
Since various Yuppie types have advocated taking microdosed LSD to increase their creativity at work, I wonder what affect this has on their ability to drive?
...and then...bunnies!...
...and if they were to do all these experiments in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study in Psychopharmacology, we would find out an incredible amount of verifiable data about the brain (and LSD, ofc).
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
I can guarantee that you're the only coward that "Wudda thot that!". Troll, BeGone!
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Quit projecting. You sound just like my wife.
So does electric shock. It isn't magic. You mess up the brain you get all kinds of weird effects.
or it could just be the LSD....
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You can always tell who hasn't actually dropped by how ridiculous their stories are, but I honestly haven't encountered "muh pot is waaaay more shifty than acid!" before.
In laymen's terms, stoned.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Well now you know why I have no wife
It's called "the don't give a fuck" effect which is brought on when tripping on LSD.
Time, what's time man, wow.
Go well
You'll remember them.... the more time you remember the longer it seems.
[($)]
Two years of my youth simply vanished, compared to my peers. Then three hours every Sunday.
Don’t get me started on the temple sessions where time moved so slowly that the only way to escape was by dozing.
Would be interesting if this is the majority effect from micro dosing. That you're basically taking these sub threshold experiences/ideas, and making them act for longer in our consciousness. Long enough to actually notice them perhaps.
Or if this is just that our minds take longer to settle into "yep, noticed that" and this test is simply measuring all of that process.
I did a lot of acid as a kid, and it didn't have any long term negative effects, despite what the voice that comes out of my bathroom sink says.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Well time is weird stuff. How do you know you're perceiving it "correctly"? You're soaking in it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I just want to extend my thanks to Captain Obvious and his study team! Clearly mind bending revelation...not.
Mushrooms and DMT too.
But yeah, I've never lost track of the direction time flows with pot.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
If only I had a snappy come back, instead of this wicked flashback. BTW, love the rainbow colors on the letters in the article. Music sucked, but totally trippy. 4 stars.
... your brain is slower when on drugs.
I don't need a research paper to see that. I just have to watch people trippin'.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
No one has made a comment about Bandersnatch
Alcohol doesn't slow down your perception of time, it eliminates it completely. All of a sudden it's last call and you have no idea it got this late, since anyone in a blackout has no perception of time at all.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
LDS speeds up the refresh rate of your brain. You might "see" the object every 50ms normally. With LSD you "see" the object every 5ms; you're paying more attention more often, and we measure time by attention. 10x more views = 10x more time, give or take.
Sit in a bar and you'll see time fly by, sit in a meeting and you can watch seconds turn to hours.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I do think that pot can produce a trance-like effect in some situations. I go hiking with my dog and there are times where we'll cross a familiar stretch of ground, maybe a mile or two, and I'll get lost in a train of thought and kind of disconnected from the world around me. We'll be at some transition point in the hike and I won't remember the last couple of miles. During that distance I wasn't unaware of my surroundings, some of the trail is challenging walking with a dog.
I do know that when we get home I'm often surprised we've been gone for 3-4 hours and walked so far.
There's this ultra-marathon runner, Diane Van Deren, who had a brain injury that affected her short-term memory. She can cover these amazing distances and I think my experience partly mimics hers and why she can go so far. I think when you lose part of your short-term memory you don't get the mental fatigue of how far you've been/how far you have to go. You're kind of only in this moment.
Time is the measure of change in our environment.
Therefore its perception is entirely subject to our sensory input.
The life cycle of our cells modulates our sensory input.
Our cells experience their environment individually.
Therefore our cells each perceive time uniquely.
Our consciousness is an averaging of all our cells' experience.
Socially, because we are all composed of similar components we have a similar experience of time.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Every page, and every word, in a 226 page novel exists at once on the shelf. If our brains were much larger, we could read not just a letter, or word instantaneously. If our minds were bigger, we could read pages, chapters, the entire novel at one time. Time is something we project in order to be able to digest our existence. So a mind-expanding drug could change this. Kurt Vonnegut explained this in Slaughterhouse Five - and was accused of dropping LSD. I discovered it 20 years before I read Vonnegut ....... so it goes.
Gently reply
I must be one of the weird people because I have never blacked out on any drug. I've tried almost of them a few times at least. I never understood how it happened to people. What sucks about it is I remember all the stupid shit I've done..
You blacked out .. You just don't remember it :-)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I can guarantee that you're the only coward that "Wudda guessed that!". Troll, BeGone!
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
I think anyone who's ever tried it could have told you immediately that it changes your perception of time. I vividly remember dosing on a Friday and being worried that I would be late for work when I didn't have to work until Monday. I knew how many days it was, and I could calculate the hours with no issue, but perceiving how long it would actually take for me to get to Monday and be sober was impossible.
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
I wish. Unfortunately I remember way too much of my life and the stupid shit I've done. And it seems that drugs and alcohol have absolutely 0 effect on my memory. I have thought I blacked out for short periods, but normally within 3 hours of being awake I can remember the night/days events clearly. As I said its really a curse because I had no plausible deniability when a friend said "you did *crazy stupid thing* last night!" because I remembered doing it. Kindof sucked lol.
Ken Kesey described his experiences on LSD when he volunteered from the CIA's MKULTRA experiments. He pranked the researchers through the whole thing. Of course, one of the evaluations was to check the subjects' perception of time. Of course his sense of time was wasted (they used pretty high doses), but Kesey noted that the idiot checking wore his wrist watch into the room. So Kesey just checked the second hand on the guy's watch, and was able to tell him how much time had passed to the second.
Funny how researchers never consider things like that.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia