Source: Horizon.

Movie directors regularly manipulate the passage of time in films to entertain their audiences, but researchers are trying to unravel the effect this can have on our brains.

Little is known about how the human brain processes time or how slow motion, time lapse and even music can alter our perception of how quickly it passes, changing our emotions and cognitive abilities.

Professor Clemens Wöllner, a cognitive musicology researcher at the University of Hamburg in Germany, describes an iconic scene in the 1990s blockbuster film Forrest Gump as an example.

As the kind-hearted but hapless hero, then a child, is being chased by bullies on bikes, he runs jerkily before picking up speed and the leg braces that constrain…