Short Article.
According to Adrian Bejan, the J.A. Jones Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Duke, the apparent temporal discrepancy of perceived time can be blamed on the ever-slowing speed at which images are obtained and processed by the human brain as the body ages.
So why does it seem like those childhood days were endless? Duke University researcher Bejan explains it is all down to physics as it much of life.
“People are often amazed at how much they remember from days that seemed to last forever in their youth,” said Bejan. “It’s not that their experiences were much deeper or more meaningful, it’s just that they were being processed in rapid fire.”
So down to the nitty gritty, Bejan attributes this phenomenon to physical changes in the aging human body. The tangled webs of nerves and neurons mature, so as they grow in size and complexity, it means that there will be longer paths for any signals to travel. An aging body will always degrade and so this will change the flow of electrical signals which traverse these paths, leading to much more resistance.
These phenomena cause the rate at which new mental images are acquired and processed to decrease with age. This is evidenced by how often the eyes of infants move compared to adults, noted Bejan;
"because infants process images faster than adults, their eyes move more often, acquiring and integrating more information."
What the result of this phenomena is, is that due to the aging eyes observing less images in comparison to a childs eye, it gives the brain the impression of time moving more rapidly.
“The human mind senses time changing when the perceived images change,” said Bejan. “The present is different from the past because the mental viewing has changed, not because somebody’s clock rings. Days seemed to last longer in your youth because the young mind receives more images during one day than the same mind in old age.”
Published study; https://doi.org/10.1017/S1062798718000741
Article sourced; https://pratt.duke.edu/about/news/its-spring-already-physics-explains-why-time-flies-we-age