Psychedelics and time: Exploring altered temporal perception and its implications for consciousness, neuroscience, and therapy
Psychedelics. – October 21, 2025
Source: OpenAlex
Summary
Psychedelics like psilocybin can significantly alter time perception, leading to experiences of time dilation and compression. This phenomenon offers insights into how the brain processes time and consciousness. Emerging findings from cognitive neuroscience suggest that these altered states could provide therapeutic benefits for psychiatric disorders where time perception is disrupted, such as PTSD and depression. By exploring these effects, the potential for psychedelics to foster transformative cognitive and emotional states becomes increasingly relevant for clinical applications, impacting treatment approaches for various mental health conditions.
Abstract
Psychedelics including psilocybin, dimethyltryptamine, and lysergic acid diethylamide are known to disrupt the normal flow of time perception, for example, producing time dilation, compression, and loss of time. These temporal anomalies provide interesting clues about how the brain processes time, what consciousness is, and what produces the sense of self. This opinion article discusses the neural mechanisms of time perception altered by psychedelics by integrating emerging research findings in cognitive neuroscience and subjective effects. We suggest that the psychedelic-induced time warp can offer a new approach to studying brain correlates of the perception of the passage of time and conscious perception of time, and may have potential therapeutic value in psychiatric disorders in which altered perception of time is core, such as posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety. Through examining these time changes, we discuss the potential of psychedelics in shaping transformative cognitive-affective states and their relevance for clinical applications.