So you always hear people say things like, I got in a car accident, and the whole thing seemed to happen in slow motion.

I saw the hood crumple and the rearview mirror fall off, and I was watching the other driver's expression.

And it's the same thing with gunfights or skiing accidents or motorcycle crashes.

But from a neuroscience perspective, is it true that time slows down?

And how could you test that?

And why does your drive to work on the first day seem to take a long time,

but after a while it takes

no time at all? And why do the years seem to go by faster as we get older?

Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me, David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford

University, and I've spent my whole career

studying the intersection between how the brain works and how we experience life.

The first time I experienced time slowing down, I was eight years old. It was a Saturday and my brother and I left the house to find something to do.

And on the way out the door, our father warned us not to go near the house under construction. And so we told them we wouldn't. And being children, we of course

went straight to the house under construction. So we poked around like kids do. And eventually we found

a ladder and we went up onto the roof. And from there, one could enjoy a wonderful view of the

mountains of Albuquerque, New Mexico. and my brother wandered off to explore some other

part of the roof, and I stepped forward to stand at the edge. Now, I didn't know what tar paper was.

I didn't know that it was stiff and that it extended past the edge of the roof on a house

under construction. So when I thought I was stepping to the roof on a house under construction.

So when I thought I was stepping to the roof's edge,

I was actually stepping on the tar paper, and I began to fall.

As I fell, I thought about grabbing for the roof's edge, but some part of my brain recognized I was too late for that.

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