Tachysensia: A Rare Condition Where Time Seems To Move Faster

(Photo : Pixabay/ Geralt)

There are people who suffer from a mysterious disorder called tachysensia, a "fast feeling" that everything around them moves quicker than it actually is.

What Is Tachysensia?

Tachysensia is a syndrome that is challenging to deal with because it is difficult to actually describe it, even for those who directly experience it. However, this rare condition is commonly described as a sense of conflict in time and space, with a discord between what is actually happening and what is perceived to be happening.

Those who suffer from tachysensia report that every word they say or hear seems to be two to three times faster and that they cannot control their own body movements. People may also feel that they are moving slowly while everything around them moves fast.

In tachysensia, sounds can also be altered or amplified, usually accompanied by physical pain. Things may appear very loud or muffled as if a person is hearing underwater.

There are many individuals who have experienced this condition at one time or another, although they are not able to put a name to it. Unfortunately, these discrepancies in the sensations of time and sound can be very troubling for people who experience them.

What Causes Tachysensia?

No one really knows exactly what causes tachysensia. The actual root of this condition remains fairly elusive, but it is connected to changes in an individual's level of fear or anxiety, body temperature, and even post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

To gain a better understanding of this condition, Joseph Mazur, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Marlboro College in Vermont, worked with a team of neurologists to create and disseminate a survey of people who experience tachysensia.

Mazur and colleagues discovered that duration seems to be one particular consistent symptom of tachysensia. Almost all the participants they interviewed claim that their episodes lasted between 5-15 minutes and happened between 4-8 times per year.

There are also some outliers who report that they experience particularly long episodes or episodes that happen more regularly. Meanwhile, the other symptoms are less consistent, such as shouting voices from a distance and headaches that accompany their visions.

The researchers speculated that in most cases, the symptoms of tachysensia begin around the puberty stage. There are even testimonials from adolescents who were alarmed by the sudden emergence of these strange sensations.

Mazur and his team concluded that a lot more studies are needed to fully understand tachysensia. However, it seemed likely that for the majority of people who experience it, the short-duration episodes were an atypical presentation of migraine.

However, tachysensia is also connected to a condition known as "Alice in Wonderland Syndrome" (AIWS), a collection of disorders that causes altered perception of the surroundings. It is a rare neurological disorder where a person's awareness of time and sound is distorted.

People with AIWS experience weird feelings, such as seeing objects as being larger or smaller than they actually are or closer or farther away. This sensation may also extend to parts of their own bodies.

AIWS is tricky to diagnose and usually happens as a secondary effect of other medical conditions like stroke or tumor. It usually appears in childhood, with episodes generally lasting for minutes rather than hours.

In the paper "The Curious Case of the Fast Feelers: A Reflection on Alice in Wonderland Syndrome," researcher Mario K. Shammas showed that the cases of fast feeling had been described before and had also been linked to Alice in Wonderland Syndrome. He also argues that distinctly eccentric phenomena like AIWS provide the deepest insight into the most fundamental questions of neurology.