Daily Podcast #18

Source 🎧

Does your heartbeat shape your sense of time? | Irena Arslanova - TED Health (TED Audio Collective)

Sentences ✍️

1. We are all constantly faced with its fleeting nature.
   • fleeting: lasting for a very short time; passing quickly
   • New sentence: I think the winter vacation was fleeting.
2. Yet, how we feel the passing of time can be highly malleable.
   • malleable: capable of being easily changed or influenced
   • New sentence: My mind is very malleable, especially when I am under pressure.
3. Ever notice how time seems to crawl during a dull meeting, but flies by on a fun weekend getaway?
   • crawl: to move slowly, often at a very sluggish pace
   • New sentence: Because I needed to sneak into that group, I crawled.

Summarization 👀

Our perception of time isn’t just a mental process—it’s deeply connected to the body, especially the heartbeat. Cognitive neuroscientist Irena Arslanova explains that time can feel faster or slower depending on our emotions, focus, or bodily state. Her research shows that the brain doesn’t work in isolation but is influenced by signals from the body. One key internal signal is the heartbeat, which sends rhythmic information to the brain. During each heartbeat, when the heart contracts, the brain enters a more action-oriented state; between beats, it becomes more perceptive.

In a lab study, stimuli shown during a heartbeat were perceived as shorter in duration than those shown between beats. This suggests our sense of time expands and contracts within each heartbeat. Time may contract when we’re ready to act and expand when we’re focused on perception. These findings imply that time perception is a dynamic, embodied experience shaped by the heart-brain connection. By tuning into our bodily state—like slowing our heart through deep breathing—we might even learn to stretch meaningful moments.