Wired has a piece on a recent study of psilocybin. The study,
Effects of Varied Doses of Psilocybin On Time Interval Reproduction in Human Subjects, published in this month's issue of the journal Neuroscience Letters, demonstrated the subjective time effects of 5mg of psilocybin, one of the active psychedelic compounds found in magic mushrooms.
The duration reproduction task (DRT) followed the same design in both experiments. A 500 Hz tone was presented to subjects via headphones for a defined duration s (presentation phase); after a constant interval of silence, w = 2 s, the same tone was presented again and the subjects had to switch off the tone by pressing a key when the duration of the second tone was subjectively equal to that of the first tone.
In the study, participants who had been given psilocybin switched off the tone earlier than they should have, which indicates they experienced the elapsed time to have been greater than it actually was. Ergo, people under the influence of mushrooms feel that time passes more slowly.
Tip of the Hat to four2oh for the heads up.
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