French Researchers Spent 40 Days in a Cave to Study Our Perception of Time
In today’s fast-paced world, many of us feel that time is a luxury we just don’t have. But what would happen if we had no way of telling the passing of time? A group of volunteers, isolated in a French cave for 40 days, recently found out.
A group of 15 French volunteers was part of a study called “Deep Time”, which set out to explore human adaptability to isolation. Christian Clot, an explorer and the project’s director, was also one of the volunteers.
“The main objective for the entire mission was to understand how a group of human beings can adapt when suddenly they are in a situation without one of the most important things in our life, which is time. I mean, everything is time in our life, we’re always watching our watch or smartphone, and suddenly you are out of time, you don’t have this information,” he said.
“What happens to the brain? What happens to social situations? What happens to our genetics?”
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Times of Social Unrest Appear to Boost Our Brain's Neuroplasticity
New research suggests that times of global unrest present a unique opportunity for neurological growth and profound behavior change, but only when leveraged correctly.
Kayla Osterhoff is a neuropsychophysiologist who studies the interaction of the mind and brain, which she calls the ‘human operating system.’
“One of the greatest mysteries in modern neuroscience is actually how the brain produces the mind. The reason why we have not been able to come up with the answer for this is because that’s not how it works. These two are actually separate systems that interact together to produce what I call the ‘human operating system,’ which is responsible for our version of reality as humans,” Osterhoff said.
Osterhoff has recently been researching the hypothesis that times of social unrest provide a valuable opportunity to neurologically upgrade this human operating system.
“Right now, we have this very unique opportunity to upgrade our ‘human operating system’ globally,” Osterhoff said. “And that is because as a society around the entire world we are experiencing this social unrest and this has caused a couple of significant cognitive and neurological shifts that have provided an opportunity for us to grow and evolve as a society.”
Osterhoff points to several fascinating factors that contribute to this phenomenon.
“So, studies are showing that acute states of stress, like shock, trauma, or something surprising like what we’re currently experiencing in our world, caused this cognitive psychological shift that actually makes our subconscious mind more suggestible, meaning that our subconscious mind is brought forward so to speak, and it’s more malleable, it’s more programmable,” Osterhoff said.
