Paying attention to time activates the brain’s supplementary motor area (SMA), says Jennifer Coull, an experimental psychologist at Aix-Marseille University in France. The more we note time’s passage, the more active the SMA becomes, she says, and neuroscientists think the brain misinterprets more SMA activity as more time passed. In studies where people were told in advance that they’d be asked how long a task took, participants focused on time passing and overestimated the activity’s duration. Those unaware they’d be asked these queries attended only to the task, and underestimated the time to complete it. The same effect is true in a car. Frustratingly, the best way to pass time is to ignore it, which is much easier said than done. This article was originally published in the Spring 2019 Transportation issue of Popular Science.
