Perceived time expands and contracts within each heartbeat

Abstract

Perception of passing time can be distorted.1 Emotional experiences, particularly arousal, can contract or expand experienced duration via their interactions with attentional and sensory processing mechanisms.2,3 Current models suggest that perceived duration can be encoded from accumulation processes4,5 and from temporally evolving neural dynamics.6,7 Yetall neural dynamics and information processing ensue at the backdrop of continuous interoceptive signals originating from within the body. Indeed, phasic fluctuations within the cardiac cycle impact neural and information processing.8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15 Here, we show that these momentary cardiac fluctuations distort experienced time and that their effect interacts with subjectively experienced arousal. In a temporal bisection task, durations (200-400ms) of an emotionally neutral visual shape or auditory tone (experiment 1) or of an image displaying happy or fearful facial expressions (experiment 2) were categorized as short or long.16 Across both experiments, stimulus presentation was time-locked to systole, when the heart contracts and baroreceptors fire signals to the brain, and to diastole, when the heart relaxes, and baroreceptors are quiescent. When participants judged the duration of emotionally neural stimuli (experiment 1), systole led to temporal contraction, whereas diastole led to temporal expansion. Such cardiac-led distortions were further modulated by the arousal ratings of the perceived facial expressions (experiment 2). At low arousal, systole contracted while diastole expanded time, but as arousal increased, this cardiac-led time distortion disappeared, shifting duration perception toward contraction. Thus, experienced time contracts and expands within each heartbeat-a balance that is disrupted under heightened arousal.