Mindfulness and the Visceral Life: Why time speeds up with age

Siegel cites a 2005 study of the sense of subjective time which concluded that "information density" is the key to understanding the waxing and waning of this feeling of time. Information density is defined as "a certain amount of information being perceived and processed per unit of time," and this density increases when an experience does not meet our expectations.

So what are "expectations"? Expectations are memory-based ideas/images of what an experience is supposed to be like. For instance: "Out in the pasture was a horse." An image will arise that is what your history has trained you, through experience, is a horse. These expectations are called "invariant representations" (IR), and are processed in the the cortical memory areas (the neocortex of the brain). This area is arranged in vertically arranged columns, made of six layers. The cortex, the outer layer of the brain, is fed perceptual information (brown, moving like such and such, whinnying sound, arrangement of limbs, etc.) which, triggering the IR, allows us to perceive "horse."

But the cortex also sends information back down the cortical layers, which allows the blending of these two streams, the raw sensual and the memory based IRs.

You don't have to intensely study the sense information of your experiencing of a horse to have your brain fire the recognition, "horse!" You could be wrong, which, if you pay attention, you'll see you are all the time in small ways. The shadowy shape under the trees out near the fence is my uncle's horse...oh, wait, actually, with more attention, I see it's the play of light against some stacked hay. (Now IRs of hay bales come to mind.)

What IRs do, in terms of perception of time, is to require less attention to orient ourselves to the world around (or within). We label and move on. This makes for more efficient information processing, but we lose the visceralness of experience in the bargain. Siegel writes:

"As we grow into adulthood, it is very likely that these accumulated layers of perceptual models and conceptual categories constrict subjective time and deaden our feeling of being alive. Without the intentional effort to awaken, life speeds by. We habituate to experience, perceiving through the filter of the past and not orienting ourselves to the novel distinctions of the present."

So even if we get the sensory information right--yup, that's a horse--over time, without intentional efforts to shut off the process of inscribing IRs, we end up with relating to the model of a horse, rather than the horse right in front of us. And since these models, by neurological design, have a lesser "information density," we find ourselves living in a greyer world if that's all that we see.

For instance, a client once achingly described this process, at the beginning of their therapy, like this:

"I feel like what happens if I'll make some big change--I'll leave a girlfriend, or move houses or cities, ditch a mentor, whatever--and for a while my life feels fresh and open. Then it's like I'm looking through a window without any glass, so what I see is what's right outside. But as I keep looking, the shapes begin to start abstracting, like the image is crystallizing. That grassy patch becomes just a green pane; the house becomes a few colors and shapes. Finally it's as if I'm looking through a stained glass window at the world, just a broad, two dimensional abstract of what was there, with only vague movement behind it. It's horrible. And then I go and smash it and can see clearly for a while till it starts again."

This is the way the past, in the form of abstracted information fed back to us from the brain's cortical level, intrudes and dulls the present, utterly unique experience. The fact is that though there is a model of a horse which genuinely does correlate with experience: the IR "horse" does point to something in the experiential world. (Otherwise, where would we know to put our saddle?) But it cannot, and is not intended to, tell us about the unique creature that stands in front of us expecting a handful of grass.

Mindfulness practice--the intentional orientation of attention to the raw, un-preprocessed experience of the present moment--is a way (psychotherapy another) to at least inhibit the grasping of the mind for IRs, if not actually break down old expectations that no longer serve us. It is a training in expanding subjective time, of increasing the "space" of our world, while depression is the exact opposite, the oppressive dominance of IRs over the raucous world of direct experience.

A child literally has not built up the neurological structures to both support (depending on how young) and encode these IRs, so the world feels fresh and new. And raw, which may account for much of the Wagnerian quality of a child's life. But maturation brings a more complex modeling of the world, and the tendency is to gradually shift from direct relationships to mediated relationships. From the things themselves, to the things as they are represented.

To practice mindfulness seems to be a process of recovering direct experience, as well as knowing when one is in the present versus relating primarily to IRs. There's nothing wrong or right with either (you wouldn't want to try to drive a car without being able to have the IR of a stoplight), and hating one over the other is like cutting off the arms because your so enamored with legs.

But the ability to drop out of what a vipassana teacher once labeled "the dusty world of the householder," into direct experience is the ability to constantly renew and refresh our worlds. That seems like something to work at.

(Resources: Dan Siegel's website ; Simple tutorial of brain structure; more detailed study of brain anatomy)