EMC Laboratory, University Lyon2, Lyon, France.
Petre Andrei University, Iași, Romania.
Sci Rep. 2017 Nov 16;7(1):15682. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-15982-6.
We have all experienced that time seems stretched during unpleasant situations. While there is evidence of subjective time overestimation when perceiving external unpleasant stimuli, no study has measured the dilation of time when individuals experience an unpleasant situation in their own body. Here we measured the time dilation induced by a painful homeostatic deviance using temporal bisection task. We show that being in pain leads to an expansion of subjective time whereby a stronger increase in pain perception relative to non-painful stimulation leads to a stronger time-estimate distortion. Neurophysiological studies suggest that time estimation and the perception of self might share a common neural substrate. We propose that, along with bodily arousal and attentional capture, the enhancement of self-awareness may be critical to support dilated subjective time when experiencing pain. As other homeostatic deviances, pain may induce a focus on ourselves contributing to the impression that "time stands still".
我们都有过这样的经历，不愉快的事情发生时，时间似乎被拉长了。虽然有证据表明，当人们感知到外部不愉快的刺激时，会高估主观时间，但还没有研究测量过当个体自身经历不愉快的情况时，时间的扩张。在这里，我们使用时间二分任务测量了由疼痛的体内平衡偏差引起的时间扩张。我们发现，疼痛会导致主观时间的延长，相对于非疼痛刺激，疼痛感知的增强会导致时间估计的扭曲程度更强。神经生理学研究表明，时间估计和自我感知可能共享一个共同的神经基础。我们提出，除了身体唤醒和注意力捕获外，自我意识的增强可能对支持疼痛时主观时间的扩张至关重要。与其他体内平衡偏差一样，疼痛可能会引起对自身的关注，从而给人留下“时间静止”的印象。
