Abstract
Depression is a multi-faceted disorder which encompasses a diversity of neuropsychological and socio-behavioral factors, with depressed individuals tending to experience a distorted perception of time. Depressive individuals find time passes slowly and are preoccupied with the past. The cause(s) of such disturbance remains to be investigated, with the nature of past events in life hypothesized to be a probable potentiating factor. The hypoactivity of the brain’s basal ganglia region, which is related to decreased response to positive stimuli, hence emotional valence, may be associated with subjective slowness of time as perceived by depressed subjects. Time distortion appears more pronounced in studies of long interval than short interval ranges. Time perception has a consolidating role which oversees and links various neuropsychological and socio-behavioral aspects of an individual’s internal interactions with the external world, therefore affecting one’s prognosis in depression. It also has a modulatory and interfering influence on perceptual objectivity due to its high sensitivity to emotional valence.
Highlights
Depression is a debilitating mood disorder that is characterized by symptoms such as anhedonia or a decreased ability to feel pleasure, increased frequency of negative mood and reduced interest in activities which one used to enjoy [1]
The results demonstrated that there were significant slowed time perception and time overestimation exhibited by depressed participants and, to both certain lesser and greater extent by manic than control participants, depending on the nature of category of the various experimental tasks performed
There seems to be a similar mechanism at work and the abnormal time experience in depressive disorder when we would connect such findings with reduced activation of dopaminergic pathways that include several areas of the basal ganglia. This could be a neural basis which explains the involvement of brain regional circuits and neurotransmission hypoactivity to produce a cascade of related depressive symptoms, especially of slowed time estimation and perception, that culminates in a diagnosis of the disorder
Summary
Depression is a debilitating mood disorder that is characterized by symptoms such as anhedonia or a decreased ability to feel pleasure, increased frequency of negative mood and reduced interest in activities which one used to enjoy [1]. Droit-Volet [2] reported that depression alters the perception of time in individuals. Those who were likely to be depressed tended to find time passed by too slowly [3]. It can be inferred that events that have taken place in the past could be casting a forward temporal and cognitive effect on depressive symptoms which follow. It is unclear whether it is the lack of positive experience or the persistence of negative experiences in an individual’s past that decreases one’s enjoyment of past activities and produces a distorted time perception
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