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Visual clutter skews our time perception

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A row of six clocks showing different times at night

Previous research has shown that our perception of time is linked to our senses.Credit: Karol Serewis/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty

When people look at larger, less cluttered scenes — a big, empty warehouse, for example — they think they viewed it for longer than they actually did. Similarly, people experience time constriction when looking at more constrained, cluttered scenes, such as an image of a well-stocked cupboard. The study of 52 participants also showed that people are more likely to remember the images they thought they viewed for longer. “It suggests that we use time to gather information about the world around us, and when we see something that’s more important, we dilate our sense of time to get more information,” says cognitive neuroscientist and study co-author Martin Wiener.

Nature | 4 min read

Reference: Nature Human Behaviour paper

NASA’s interstellar spacecraft has sent updates about its health and operating status after five months of transmitting garbled data. Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 was the first human-made object to leave the solar system. Now 24 billion kilometres from Earth, in November last year it started sending signals that didn’t make sense. Following modifications to how Voyager 1 stores data aimed at fixing the glitch, NASA’s flight team confirmed on 22 April that they were able to communicate with the spacecraft once again. They hope to restore its ability to send back science data, too.

Space.com | 4 min read

Fossil vertebrae of possibly the longest snake to have ever lived have been unearthed in a coal mine in India. Researchers recovered 27 vertebrae of a snake estimated to reach up to 15 metres in length, more than twice that of the longest snakes alive today, reticulated pythons (Malayopython reticulatus), and probably slightly longer than the extinct Titanoboa. The snake, dubbed Vasuki indicus, lived 47 million years ago.

New Scientist | 2 min read

Reference: Scientific Reports paper

Anterior trunk vertebrae of Vasuki indicus.

Some of the fossil vertebrae discovered in a mine in Gujarat in western India, the largest of which are about 11 cm wide (Debajit Datta et al/Scientific Reports)

Features & opinion

Tamsin Mather’s book Adventures in Volcanoland takes readers on a journey to some of the world’s most notorious and active volcanoes — and reminds us that the next volcanic catastrophe is inevitable. Yet global preparedness for volcanic eruptions is severely lacking, says fellow volcanologist and reviewer Heather Handley. There is no international treaty organization for volcanic hazards and no global coordination on issuing comprehensive warnings of risks of eruptions, she says. Mather’s book “reminds us that we should all keep careful watch on the world’s volcanoes”.

Nature | 7 min read

Researchers urgently need to explore the future carbon footprint of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, argues a group of sustainability researchers. The direct impacts of AI computing infrastructure — currently about 0.01% of global greenhouse-gas emissions — are likely to remain relatively small, the researchers write. But there could be huge indirect impacts from the way AI tools transform our economies and societies. The group urges researchers to assess whether AI will help or hinder climate progress under different possible scenarios.

Nature | 10 min read

“In my flu career, we have not seen a virus that expands its host range quite like this,” says virologist Troy Sutton about H5N1, an avian influenza virus that has rapidly infiltrated species well beyond birds. While most mammal infections were probably caused by contact with an infected bird, there’s evidence that the virus has now evolved to spread directly between some species, such as sea lions. Spreading in more species gives H5N1 opportunities to further adapt to mammals, including humans. So far, the virus doesn’t show signs of being able to cause a pandemic, Sutton says. “If we don’t give it the panic but we give it the respect and due diligence, I believe we can manage it,” adds Rick Bright, chief executive of a public health consultancy.

The New York Times | 10 min read

Where I work

Lindonne Telesford tends to recently planted potted seedlings and measures their growth in a greenhouse.

Lindonne Telesford is a public-health researcher, associate lecturer and assistant dean at St. George’s University in Grenada.Credit: Micah B. Rubin for Nature

Public-health researcher Lindonne Telesford explores whether ‘foamed glass’ could help farmers on Grenada to adapt to climate change. The porous material, which is made from recycled glass, is added to soil where it traps and retains water during droughts. In a pilot study, plants grown in soil treated with porous glass had a higher yield than control plants did, Telesford explains. “Agricultural research is a major undertaking for Grenada, because the country has a low research capacity — but every little bit counts if it can bring benefits to farmers and protect our island environment.” (Nature | 3 min read) (Micah B. Rubin for Nature)

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Biologist Kelly Weinersmith, co-author of a book on human settlements in space, explains that the bags of waste left behind on the Moon would make good fertilizer for lunar soil — if NASA didn’t regard them as heritage. (Nature Podcast | 38 min listen)

A little while ago, I asked readers about their favourite dull lab tasks. You didn’t disappoint: counting worm eggs, restocking pipette tips and hand-grinding fish ears all sound incredibly boring yet strangely satisfying.

“The best job was sterility testing, where one injected media tube after media tube,” recalls retired nurse practitioner Danamaya Gorham. “Nobody would disturb you for about two hours. The loud hiss of the laminar flow obscured the music (and my singing) from the rest of the lab.”

Help to keep this newsletter exciting by sending your feedback to [email protected].

Thanks for reading,

Katrina Krämer, associate editor, Nature Briefing

With contributions by Flora Graham, Smriti Mallapaty and Sarah Tomlin

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Categories
Life Style

Your perception of time is skewed by what you see

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A row of six clocks showing different times at night

Previous research has shown that our perception of time is linked to our senses.Credit: Karol Serewis/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty

How the brain processes visual information — and its perception of time — is heavily influenced by what we’re looking at, a study has found.

In the experiment, participants perceived the amount of time they had spent looking at an image differently depending on how large, cluttered or memorable the contents of the picture were. They were also more likely to remember images that they thought they had viewed for longer.

The findings, published on 22 April in Nature Human Behaviour1, could offer fresh insights into how people experience and keep track of time.

“For over 50 years, we’ve known that objectively longer-presented things on a screen are better remembered,” says study co-author Martin Wiener, a cognitive neuroscientist at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. “This is showing for the first time, a subjectively experienced longer interval is also better remembered.”

Sense of time

Research has shown that humans’ perception of time is intrinsically linked to our senses. “Because we do not have a sensory organ dedicated to encoding time, all sensory organs are in fact conveying temporal information” says Virginie van Wassenhove, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Paris–Saclay in Essonne, France.

Previous studies found that basic features of an image, such as its colours and contrast, can alter people’s perceptions of time spent viewing the image. In the latest study, researchers set out to investigate whether higher-level semantic features, such as memorability, can have the same effect.

The researchers first created a set of 252 images, which varied according to the size of the scene and how cluttered it was, then developed tests to determine whether those characteristics affected the sense of time in 52 participants. For example, an image of a well-stocked cupboard would be defined as being smaller but more cluttered than one featuring an empty warehouse. Participants were shown each image for less than a second, and asked to rate the time they were shown a specific image as ‘long’ or ‘short’.

When viewing larger or less-cluttered scenes, participants were more likely to experience time dilation; thinking that they had viewed the picture for longer than they actually did. The opposite effect — time constriction — occurred when viewing smaller-scale, more cluttered images.

The researchers suggest two possible explanations for these distortions. One posits that visual clutter is perceived as harder to navigate and move through, whereas the other says that clutter impairs our ability to recognize objects, making it harder to mentally encode the visual information. These difficulties could both lead to time constriction.

Memorable sights

To investigate whether more-memorable images could have an effect on time perception, the researchers showed 48 participants a set of 196 images rated according to their memorability by a neural network. Participants not only experienced time dilation when looking at more-memorable images, but were also more likely to remember those images the next day.

The images were then applied to a neural-network model of the human visual system, one that could process information over time, unlike other networks that take in data only once. The model processed more-memorable images faster than less-memorable ones. A similar process in the human brain could be responsible for the time-dilation effect when looking at a memorable image, says Wiener. “It suggests that we use time to gather information about the world around us, and when we see something that’s more important, we dilate our sense of time to get more information.” This adds to converging evidence that suggests a link between memorability and increased brain processing, says van Wassenhove.

Questions remain about exactly how people perceive time and how this interacts with memory. “We’re still missing pieces of the puzzle,” says Wiener. The next step would be to validate the findings with a larger sample of participants, and to refine the model of the visual system, he adds. Van Wassenhove suggest that future studies could use neuroimaging to study brain activity during perception tests. Eventually, Wiener hopes to test whether the brain could be stimulated artificially to influence the way it processes time and memory.

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