Time perception

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Today I read this article about time perception, which I find a very interesting topic:

BBC News - Today - When time flies

Researchers (led by Prof. Sackett, Minnesota) manipulated the experienced time that had passed in an experiment. They found that people who were made to believe time had flown reported enjoying the task more, and those who believed time had dragged reported the opposite.

In countless experiments, psychologists have shown that people report that their perception of time is faster in exciting situations and slower in boring situations.

Dr. Wittmann (Freiburg), using an fMRI machine to scan people's brains as they made timing estimates, found a "significant neural activation signature" in one brain area, the insular cortex. This region, he says, is the main brain area where our bodily sensations are processed, leading him to theorize that the feeling of time passing is based on the amount of stimulation our brain receives from our body. When we are engaged in activities where we forget about our body, immersed in an exciting film or an absorbing task, time seems to fly, he says. But when we are acutely aware of our own body, and this region of our brain becomes highly stimulated - as in threatening situations - our time perception slows down.

Interesting, all that, but it made me wonder:
What happens then to our time perception when we are having sex?
Because it is a pleasant activity, you would expect the time passing to be perceived as going by very fast, but because we are also aware of our body and our brain is receiving stimulation from our body, you would expect the time passing to be perceived as going by slowly.
These are contradictory. Or would having sex be an exceptional case?

(just came up in my mind )

I could mention of some answers, but they would get this booted into the Adult forum...

Let's say, for vagueness' sake, that the anticipation of the stimuli towards the reward would alter the perception of the participants. If things were being done in a positively reinforcing way, the process could be enjoyed as much as the result. Or if the quality was insufficient (poor or inept stimuli), it would seem like it went on a lot longer...

I don't recall ever being bored. I always have something happening internally.

It's interesting for you to bring this up because I am noted for having a pretty precise sense of time. Time neither flies nor drags for me.

In my experience, time actually moves slower when I am having a good time than when I am bored.

In my experience time does not move, my awareness pans across time, viewing slices of it edge on.

It doesn't pan very quickly, happily, as it's a nice experience... being able to have experiences I'm aware of.

I'm the same. I can often 'guess' the time to within ten minutes of the correct one, even having been away from any time keeping devices for hours or even days. Only when I'm sick do I loose track of time.

Yup. Exactly. I actually live without the use of an alarm clock. I just know when to get up.

i find that time rarely changes to me. i play a game with my partner regarding who can guess the time closer to what it really is. i just "guess"/figure it out and am usually rather close. i think that i am just very methodical about things.

sometimes though, time passes by without me noticing so much. but it never surprises me what time it is. i just stop and think about the amount of time that has probably passed.

all that said though, time does seem to "move more quickly" when i have lots of stimuli around me. i just don't notice it passing as i normally do. normally i keep stimulus to a minimum and therefore have plenty of mental faculty to keep my internal chronometer running. when too much is coming at me, i just can't afford the resources i suppose!

Yup. That sums it up. It would be interesting to see if it works in an isolation tank.

I heard about the study on public radio, but you raise a very interesting question regarding time perception during sex. More research needed But seriously, no matter how much time passes IRL, sex always seems to end too quickly.

oh - i have this theory about why time speeds up when you're older...

if you are one year old - 1 year takes an entire lifetime to pass - therefore one year lasts forever
if you are 2 years old - 1 year passes in only half a lifetime - twice as fast
by the time you are 40 or so - your one year only lasts 1/40th of a lifetime - MUCH faster

and thats why the years go by faster and faster as you get older

its an exponential thing time isnt it?

As someone who has been both young and old my experience is that when novel events take place time passes more slowly as the mind notes the events carefully and alots attention and memory to each new experience. When we are young almost all our experiences are novel so time passes slowly. As we age less attention is paid to routine events so they are more or less ignored and less noted as filling a space in time. At my age (84) almost nothing new appears and time passes swiftly.
When people learn a new task, such as driving a car or flying an airplane every move is noted as it is difficult to know what is important and what can be ignored. Once the important things are known they can be relegated to the unconscious in a manner that computer operations can be collected and one key tap can initiate the whole operation. It is no longer necessary to remember the details. As one ages whole series of daily operations can be collected and made into one button press operations. That's why older people find themselves standing in front of a closet or a refrigerator wondering why they are there and what they want because the whole operation of going has been relegated to automatism and doesn't exist in time and meanwhile their thoughts have gone on to other things and the original impulse has been forgotten. When driving a car an experienced driver doesn't have to think about what gear to be in or how to do it. That operation doesn't exist in time.

I think i have an example of this: When i was working for a retailer, i would often try to get some sleep. To do this, i would concentrate on one thing (usually some image, and making it spin/rotate in my mind) and it felt like time was dragging. Dragging enough so that i could fall asleep, yet still awake enough to know when to get back to work (with the aid of my trust watch alarm ).