As we all know, the rate at which the human brain perceives the passage of time is variable. Some people have an inherent talent to voluntarily change how fast they perceive time as passing, but for most of us, that is not the case. And since you're reading this forum post, chances are you've already lived at least 10 or so years and have some sort of stabilized chronoperception. For instance, if you were locked in a dark and quiet room, you'd be able to think "about this long is a second" and be pretty close. But this isn't always the case.

Have you ever listened to one of your favorite songs when you were dead tired and about to go to bed, and thought "hm, it's playing back faster than usual"? If so, you have experienced a increase in the rate at which you perceive time to be passing. This is due to a slowdown of your brain, which makes everything seem relatively faster.

Here's a (self-tested) solution to "overclock" your brain, so to say. I can't guarantee its efficacy for everybody else, but it definitely worked for me. I was quite surprised to learn that there aren't really any notable negative side effects to this, besides the fact that everything seems to take longer (and thus, feel more boring).

First, pick one of your favorite songs. Make sure you won't get sick of hearing it after a while, because you're going to be listening to it on loop a whole lot in the upcoming days.

Preferably, you'd have a 24-bit 192kHz lossless source to work from, because it's going to be resampled while you create the additional "transitional" clips. Differences after resampling that our conscious mind won't pick up will still likely affect how the brain perceives it on a subconscious level, so the less loss the better.

• Listen to the original source on loop until you can 100% be able to play it back perfectly in your mind without any significant difference from the original. Then listen to it for a couple more days just to be sure. If you already have a favorite song that's been stuck in your head since forever, you can skip this step.
  
• Now that the track is habituated into your mind, take the original lossless source, and speed it up 1% in audacity and save the output. Listen to the output.
  • The output will sound noticeably different to people who are astute with audio perception. If that is the case, use a smaller increment, and convince your brain that it is the same song.
    
  • If your brain is convinced that you are listening to the same song, it'll attribute differences to an error in the speed at which you perceive the track, or your chronoperception.
    
  • The brain will then attempt to correct that by raising the speed at which it perceives the passage of time until the incoming audio info matches what is stored.
    
• Do this until you are comfortably sure that you hear no difference in the audio compared to the track you remember. Then, create a 2% sped-up track and listen to that.
  • I recommend going up 1% per day, using a new track when you wake up.
    
• Repeat this enough and you will notice a significant difference in the real world. There is a theoretical possibility that your brain can "snap back" to the original speed if it is exposed to a familiar stimulus, but I have not experienced that yet.
  

Over the course of the past month or so, I've sped up to 21% successfully and have noticed a significant difference in how slow the rest of the world appears. People seem to talk slower, and it seems to take me more effort to cruise at a certain speed on my bicycle. (In reality, it is likely because I am trying to cycle faster than the speed that I grew accustomed to over the past few years, and straining my muscles more than usual.)

Quite importantly, I had a notable, verifiable decrease in my reaction times. A lot of attacks that I could not react to previously in certain fighting games can now be blocked, substantially improving my performance. To check that it's not a placebo effect, I tried out the standard reaction time testers and got positive results. The human benchmark test puts me at 250ms whereas I averaged over 300ms consistently before (Yeah I know, I have terrible reaction times), and I now consistently pass the milliablocker test with 14-15F reaction time whereas I was always slow (at 19-21F) before. This doesn't mean it won't work for you if your reaction time is already that fast; it's a relative change.

If any SENers are willing to try this out, drop a post! I'd be intrigued by your results.

I'll give it a go, Current Benchmark Results

Did you come up with this yourself, or did you get it from somewhere?

Also, someone should definitely do the opposite and slow down a track by 1% each day.

Day 52: I am in a coma.

I came up with it myself, but there's likely documentation for similar experiments elsewhere since it's highly unlikely that I'm the first guy to have thought of this. I haven't found any in my brief Googling, but I'm not really sure what keywords I'm supposed to be searching for.

I seriously can't imagine what benefits doing the opposite would confer (since it'd make your brain work slower), but if someone does try that, post about it!

How is this test coming along? I'm considering testing it out myself when I get home from the beach tonight/Wednesday morning.

Also, does this work with any speed of song? As in, is it better to do the test with something like "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" or Frederic Chopin's "Raindrops" for examples.

How do you know if its the act of hearing a memorized tune faster and your brain compensating, or if just listening to music with higher tempo increases your reaction time?

I'd laugh if this literally speeds up your brain entirely. Like your heartrate eventually is like 200% the normal human rate and you die when you're 30.

Heartrate isn't directly controlled by the brain.

I've been listening to really fast music for ages before this and my reaction time was still shit. It's most definitely the former if I had to choose one.

Well, I used heavy metal, but I wouldn't be surprised if it also works with any genre. Your brain just needs to be able to really easily memorize and subsequently recognize the track.

As for the experiment, so far it's been great. I haven't tried to speed it up even more since the OP, because I already noticed that I was not catching up as quickly around the 20% mark, so I decided that it's good enough for now. Still haven't noticed any side effects. I've been eating more and finishing meals faster, but I think that's just a coincidence due to it being summer and coinciding with more physical exercise.

I imagine it would have the same effect as meditation after a while, where your brain starts relaxing. It's supposed to cause brain aging to slow down.