Does Migraine Make Time “Slow Down”?
A small study seems to affirm what we all knew – time just passes more slowly for migraineurs.
All right, time doesn’t literally pass more slowly. But we seem to perceive it as passing more slowly.
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Or so says a small study from the Anhui Medical University in China. Researchers used a computer to show images for varying lengths of time, then asked the subjects to estimate how long the image appeared for. Those with migraine tended to estimate longer times, compared to their healthy counterparts.
Then again, it’s not all that straightforward. The images appeared for either 1 second, 5 seconds, or 600 milliseconds. The only difference came in the 600 millisecond test.
This rather bizarre difference may not prove that time passes more slowly for migraineurs, but it does once again indicate that migraine disease impacts the way we think. Not just the way we think about things, but the way our brains actually function.
Now, if only we could find a way to perceive migraine attacks as being shorter – I might be able to handle them if they only lasted 600 milliseconds…