At Goldsmiths University of London, Lauren Stewart studies how music evokes flow states, where the listener becomes so absorbed that time disappears. She also investigates how individual differences shape the way we process and feel music.

Her research connects musical immersion, time distortion, and memory, helping explain the science behind “losing track of time.”

sources:
Stewart, L., & Müllensiefen, D. (2014). Music and brain: Individual differences in musical reward sensitivity. Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain, 24(2), 147–155.
https://doi.org/10.1037/pmu0000047

Stewart leads the Music, Mind and Brain program at:
Goldsmiths, University of London

Tempo doesn’t just make you dance; it modulates how long you feel you have danced.

Faster tracks elevate arousal and make minutes collapse, while languid music expands them. Controlled laboratory work finds that changing from 60 bpm to 150 bpm can swing perceived duration by as much as 25 %. 

sources: Frontiers, Nature

When we listen to music—especially emotionally charged or personally meaningful music—the medial prefrontal cortex becomes highly active. This region is strongly associated with self-referential thinking, meaning it helps us process whether what we’re hearing relates to us, our identity, and our memories.

Research using fMRI scans (e.g., Janata et al., 2009) shows that when listeners hear music they find meaningful or familiar, this region lights up—suggesting it plays a central role in how music anchors us in autobiographical memory and reshapes our sense of self in time.

sources:
Janata, P. (2009).
“The neural architecture of music-evoked autobiographical memories.”
Cerebral Cortex, 19(11), 2579–2594.
https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhp008

Koelsch, S. (2014).
“Brain correlates of music-evoked emotions.”
Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 15(3), 170–180.
https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3666

Menon, V., & Levitin, D. J. (2005).
“The rewards of music listening: Response and physiological connectivity of the mesolimbic system.”
NeuroImage, 28(1), 175–184.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005.05.053

Across dozens of experiments, people routinely over‑estimate how long a sound lasts compared with a silent or visual stimulus.

In a 2024 Frontiers in Neuroscience study, listeners judged short tones as longer than identical flashes, confirming a robust “auditory‑over‑visual” bias. Intriguingly, musicians flipped the effect, under‑estimating durations—suggesting that training can tune our internal clocks.

source: Frontiers

The sweet spot comes when music locks attention so completely that awareness of time vanishes—the psychological state known as flow.

Analyses of live‑performance data show that predictable melodic motion and just‑enough rhythmic surprise are reliable gateways to flow, while sudden syncopations can kick you back into clock time. 

source: Frontiers

Focusing on groove and microtiming, Anne Danielsen studies how tiny rhythmic shifts create sensations of “timelessness” in genres like electronic and funk.

She leads Oslo’s RITMO Centre for research into rhythm, time, and motion.

sources:
Danielsen, A. (2010). Presence and Pleasure: The Funk Grooves of James Brown and Parliament. Wesleyan University Press.
Book link (Wesleyan University Press)

Danielsen, A., Jensenius, A. R., & Haugen, M. R. (2015). Moving to the groove: Tracking participants’ motion to music with different groove levels. Journal of New Music

Our mission is simple: curate and mix music & sounds that recalibrate your inner chronometer

Stay curious, keep listening, and remember: time travel is as close as your next play button.