A study earlier in the year showed how more memories are created when the brain is thinking quicker. And more memories mean time appears to drag on for longer. Looking at the other extreme if you are hung over and don't do anything all day, then it will be dinner time before you know it.

When I was a kid the days used to seem so long, but now the days just roll on by. As people age, the brain slows down and I've often heard old people say that years are rolling by. As the brain gets slower and slower, it must seem that you just accelerate towards the end.

So quicker thinking that comes with youth, slows the appearance of time and if prolonged your overall life experienced will be longer.

Quicker thinking can also be experienced during a traumatic event. Being in a car accident or watching someone fall appears to happen in slow motion. This is the brain speeding up - a survival instinct allowing more time to act and avoid injury.

David Eagleman from the University of Texas at Houston did an extreme experiment where volunteers jumped backwards on a bungee while he transmitted a rapid succession of numbers to an LED on their wrists. During the fall they were able to read the numbers, which under normal conditions would have appeared too quick.

David Eagleman believes that a better understanding of how this is possible will result in helping people process information at higher rates. This kind of 'think faster' augmentation would slow time down and enable people to operate at a higher level of cognitive efficiency.

Since the brain tends to think faster during times of fight or flight the obvious side effect will be stress. So any drugs or methods that enable this possibility would also need to overcome the anxieties as well.

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