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The term “afterglow” originally described the heightened mood and relaxation following psychedelics and later extended to other altered states. Despite anecdotal reports, little research has explored this effect, especially in Floatation-REST (Reduced Environmental Stimulation Technique). In this method, individuals float in thermoneutral, supersaturated salt water in a dark, quiet tank. Using a crossover design, 34 participants (17 females, 17 males; avg. age 32.2, SD = 8.8) were randomized to 60 min of Floatation-REST or Bed-REST (a control condition on a waterbed). Floatation-REST induced significantly weaker body boundaries, significantly stronger time distortion, and significantly greater relaxation. Post-exposure, participants reported a significantly stronger afterglow, significantly more state mindfulness, and significantly greater interoceptive awareness. Mediation analysis showed relaxation during floating fully explains the afterglow effect. These findings align with psychedelic research, suggesting Floatation-REST elicits similar effects and laying the groundwork for future studies on prolonged afterglow experiences.

Floatation-REST (Reduced Environmental Stimulation Therapy) minimizes stimulation of the nervous system by immersing subjects in an environment without sound or light while they effortlessly float in thermoneutral water supersaturated with Epsom salt. Here we investigated the relationship between altered states of consciousness (ASC) and its association with the affective changes induced by Floatation-REST. Using a within-subject crossover design, 50 healthy subjects were randomized to 60 min of Floatation-REST or 60 min of Bed-REST (an active control condition that entailed lying supine on a warm waterbed in a dark and quiet room). Following Floatation-REST, subjects felt significantly more relaxed, less anxious, and less tired than after Bed-REST. Floatation-REST also induced significantly more pronounced ASC characterized by the dissolution of body boundaries and the distortion of subjective time. The loss of body boundaries mediated the loss of anxiety, revealing a novel mechanism by which Floatation-REST exerts its anxiolytic effect.

Most interval timing research has focused on prospective timing tasks, in which participants are explicitly asked to pay attention to time as they are tested over multiple trials. Our current understanding of interval timing primarily relies on prospective timing. However, most real-life temporal judgments are made without knowing beforehand that the durations of events will need to be estimated (i.e., retrospective timing). The current study investigated the retrospective timing performance of ~24,500 participants with a wide range of intervals (5-90 min). Participants were asked to judge how long it took them to complete a set of questionnaires that were filled out at the participants' own pace. Participants overestimated and underestimated durations shorter and longer than 15 min, respectively. They were most accurate at estimating 15-min long events. The between-subject variability in duration estimates decreased exponentially as a function of time, reaching the lower asymptote after 30 min. Finally, a considerable proportion of participants exhibited whole number bias by rounding their duration estimates to the multiples of 5 min. Our results provide evidence for systematic biases in retrospective temporal judgments, and show that variability in retrospective timing is relatively higher for shorter durations (e.g., < 30 min). The primary findings gathered from our dataset were replicated based on the secondary analyses of another dataset (Blursday). The current study constitutes the most comprehensive study of retrospective timing regarding the range of durations and sample size tested.

INTRODUCTION: There is growing evidence of the beneficial effects of exposure to nature on health and well-being. Time spent in nature can decrease stress, anxiety, depression, and improve mood. In the present study, we compared the experience of a short period of silence in the natural environment of a forest with the same amount of silence in a seminar room. METHODS: We applied an intra-subject design with two 6:30-min sessions of silence in two different environments (forest, seminar room). The participants (n=41) were assigned to four groups. Two groups started with the indoor condition and two groups with the outdoor condition. After 1 week, the two groups were exposed to the other condition. Participants filled out personality-trait scales on meaning in life and belief in oneness with the world, as well as state scales assessing emotional reactions, relaxation, boredom, and the subjective sense of self, time, and space. RESULTS: Participants felt significantly more relaxed and less bored in the forest compared to indoors. They experienced time less intensely, judging it to pass faster and to last shorter in the forest. Regarding trait variables, the higher the search for meaning, the higher oneness beliefs in participants. The higher oneness beliefs, the more positive participants felt during silence in the forest. DISCUSSION: Interest in nature-assisted therapy is increasing in the healthcare sector. Exposure to silence in the natural setting of a forest could prove to be an effective complement to interventions applied in nature-assisted therapy, such as forest therapy.

INTRODUCTION: The COVID-19 pandemic has majorly disrupted many aspects of people's lives, provoking psychosocial distress among students. People's positive and negative attitudes towards the past, present and future were a dispositional pre-COVID-19 reality. Faced with a pandemic, people have reported disruptions in the speed of passing time. People can shift their attention more towards the past, present or future when major changes in society occur. These aspects of psychological time would be key to understanding the quality of psychosocial adjustment to the pandemic. We hypothesized that dispositional time attitudes impact psychosocial distress because they would trigger situational changes in our time perception and temporal focus. METHODS: One hundred and forty-four university students in Uruguay responded to self-report questionnaires online while in-person classes were cancelled. Students reported on shifts in temporal focus, changes in time awareness and dispositional time attitudes. Reactive psychological, social and learning environment distress were reported. RESULTS: Students reported substantial changes in time perception and temporal focus. A correlation matrix showed significant relationships between time attitudes, focus and awareness. For example, psychological distress was correlated with negative time attitudes, slower passage of time, boredom, blurred sense of time and shifting focus to the past. Mediation models were derived. The indirect effect of time attitudes on psychological distress was significant through past focus. DISCUSSION: Dispositional time attitudes would impact students' capacity to cope with the pandemic. Situational shifts in temporal focus and perception were prevalent and can be viewed as temporal coping mechanisms in the wake of powerful societal change. Our mediation models showed that those with negative time attitudes experienced more psychological distress because they shifted their attention to the past. Future directions for research and practical implications are discussed.

Boredom is an everyday experience during uneventful situations and while waiting. Such situations are typically described as unpleasant since oneself becomes the focus of awareness, and the subjective duration expands. Self-control is an individual trait that helps to cope with unpleasant situations. Hardly any systematic studies exist on real waiting situations where people's boredom and subjective time experience are assessed in relation to self-control. Therefore, we assessed 99 participants who first filled out self-report questionnaires on emotional and metacognitive control, the Scale for Experiencing Emotions (SEE) and the Temporal Metacognition Scale (TMCS). After giving a fake reason for why they had to wait, participants were shut in an empty room alone for 7.5 minutes and afterwards asked to report their impressions regarding the experienced time and reactions to the situation. Boredom was associated with the feeling of time passing more slowly and more frequent thoughts about time. The propensity to self-regulate was related to less awareness of time and to lower levels of boredom. Mediation analyses revealed that the level of boredom mediates the relationships between self-regulation processes and time perception. The results provide new insights into the association between time perception and boredom as states in a real situation and self-regulation as a trait.

Empirical findings in the Cognitive Sciences on the relationship between feeling states and subjective time have led to the assumption that time perception entails emotional and interoceptive states. The perception of time would thereafter be embodied; the bodily self, the continuous input from the body is the functional anchor of phenomenal experience and the mental self. Subjective time emerges through the existence of the self across time as an enduring and embodied entity. This relation is prominently disclosed in studies on altered states of consciousness such as in meditative states, under the influence of hallucinogens as well as in many psychiatric and neurological conditions. An increased awareness of oneself coincides with an increased awareness of time. Conversely, a decreased awareness of the self is associated with diminished awareness of time. The body of empirical work within different conceptual frameworks on the intricate relationship between self and time is presented and discussed.

Data from three experiments on serial perception of temporal intervals in the supra-second domain are reported. Sequences of short acoustic signals ("pips") separated by periods of silence were presented to the observers. Two types of time series, geometric or alternating, were used, where the modulus 1+δ of the inter-pip series and the base duration Tb (range from 1.1 to 6s) were varied as independent parameters. The observers had to judge whether the series were accelerating, decelerating, or uniform (3 paradigm), or to distinguish regular from irregular sequences (2 paradigm). "Intervals of subjective uniformity" (isus) were obtained by fitting Gaussian psychometric functions to individual subjects' responses. Progression towards longer base durations (Tb=4.4 or 6s) shifts the isus towards negative δs, i.e., accelerating series. This finding is compatible with the phenomenon of "subjective shortening" of past temporal intervals, which is naturally accounted for by the lossy integration model of internal time representation. The opposite effect observed for short durations (Tb=1.1 or 1.5s) remains unexplained by the lossy integration model, and presents a challenge for further research.