We have all experienced the feeling that time is slowing down . We often experience it involuntarily, when we observe some hypnotic scene, such as the flames of a bonfire or the waves of the sea. We perceive that these images move more slowly than the rest.
This is what chronostasis consists of, a word that comes from the Greek chronos (time) and stasis (stopped). To study this phenomenon of chronostasis, scientists have sought to induce it artificially . For example, the so-called saccadic masking explains some of these perceptions. It is enough for a person to bring his face close to a mirror and look alternately at his right and left eye. Any outside observer will see that he is moving both, but the protagonist of the experiment will not notice any change. What actually happens is that the brain captures and fixes an image to avoid a blurry sensation , such as when a photo is blurred.
But there are other manifestations of chronostasis studied in laboratories . For example, a group of experts from University College London was intrigued by the illusion of the clock hand , when the second hand appears to freeze in the position it occupies when we look at it. The conclusion is that, beyond saccadic masking, this effect obeys a mechanism that our gray mass usually uses when it is difficult to process the speed of an object .
