Time distortion when falling asleep

the Stuff Dreams are made of...
1

I have a question for all the bright scientific minds among us.

Is it possible that as we are falling asleep our sense of time is different then before (specifically slower)?

I say this because when i am falling asleep at night, it usually takes me a while, because of all the tossing and turning, yadda yadda yadda, whatever.

I often toss and turn for what seems to me like an hour, but when i check the clock it has only been about 10 minutes.

I think it may be plausible because isn’t your brain slowing down a bit as you are falling asleep and could this cause any distortion in our sense of time?

2

Plausible. Especially if you think about how long a dream can be (days, weeks, years even) yet still in only 1 night.

I don’t think it happens to all of us though, nor all the time. I certainly don’t feel like time slows down for me when I go to sleep.

Just my 2 cents :shrug:

3

yeah definatly. Especially this morning when i woke up at 6 and went back to bed while it felt like i fell asleep for another 2 hours. When i woke up after haveing a pretty long dream i saw that it was only 6:10…strange. :eh:

4

I believe it’s not as easy as, the brain slowing down. It does, but there is more going on. The different areas in the brain stop communicating, until in deep sleep, they don’t communicate at all. I don’t know if there is a centre that deals with time, but you can imagine the strange effects loss of communication with it might produce. It doesn’t need to be a specific centre for it, but when connections are lost of weakened, “bugs” can appear.

5

Definitely. I think it can happen either way, but usually happens like you described. Going the other way (what seems like 2 min is actually 30 min) is probably caused by falling lightly asleep so that your mind doesn’t record the time that passes except for the fringes where you are not asleep. Also remember the saying “Time flies when you’re having fun.”

6

i think it is more to do with how you are focusing. right now try and do nothing just close your eyes and sit there and think, try and do that for 10 minutes, i bet after only 3 you will think it has been at least 10 and wont understand why.

now sit here and type away or listen to music for what you think to be 10 minutes, you will prob get close or over shoot a bit.

It has to do with how you are focusing, there are things here to distract you and you can focus on them and not on time, but when you are doing nothing bar trying to sleep you may actually get bored, you are focusing on everything around you everytick of the clock dragging over and over and it feels like an hour has gone by when it has only been ten minutes.

The power of focus