Usually we think the brain is in charge, not the heart, but in Soviet Russia, heartbeat controls YOU. Actually. That's misleading… your heartbeat can control you all the time, regardless of your sociopolitical system or country of origin. Hey heart-beaters, Trace here for Dnews. You probably know that the way you feel can affect your heart rate. If you’re feelin’ calm, your heart rate’s nice and slow, chances are you don’t even feel it. And when faced with fear or… something really exciting, you might feel your heart pounding away in your chest. But your heart rate doesn't just respond to what you're feeling, it can -in some ways- control how you feel by changing the way you process incoming information. A study lead by Dr. Sarah Garfinkel and published in 2016 in the Journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences found cardiovascular arousal, or that state where your heart is pumping faster or harder than normal, can actually intensify your feelings of fear and anxiety. The researchers say this happens because every heartbeat- the strength, the timing- is signaled to the brain thanks to receptors in the blood vessels called baroreceptors. When the heart rate and blood pressure increase, baroreceptors tell this to the brain, and it’s thought that the brain can interpret that signal as fear. In a set of studies by Garfinkel, participants were shown images of faces some that looked neutral, and some that looked scary. Researchers timed the images so that some would coincide with when participants hearts were contracting and pumping blood the systole phase and others would coincide with when the heart was relaxing, or in the diastole phase. Turns out the participants could spot the scary images faster when the heart was contracting than when it was relaxing. The same effect was not seen with the neutral images. In fact, the neutral images were perceived slightly more at the diastole phase. And in another study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, Swiss researchers found that when the participants were shown a flashing object that was in sync with their heartrate, it took them longer to even notice it compared to when it was not in sync.

It was as though the heart rate cancelled out some of the incoming information. There is also some evidence showing that heart rate may impact the way we perceive time. Researchers out of the Japan Society of Kansei Engineering tested this theory on 48 people with the help of a little music. They varied the tempo of the music and by putting the study participants on exercise bikes, they could speed up or slow down their heart rates. The authors found that with a slight increase in heartrate, people underestimated how long the music was. With a really fast heart rate they overestimated the duration, thinking the music lasted longer than it really did. And still another study published in the journal Biological Psychology found that people who are more sensitive or aware of their own heartbeat are better at judging duration of time. I feel like that's totally me. The thing is, it's not a superpower. A study published by Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany found that heart rate alone may not actually be to blame when you feel like time is dragging by. They showed subjects a presentation while they were either exercising or holding their breaths. Exercising would increase their heart rate, while breath-holding would actually slow it down. Participants were then asked to rate how intense they thought the strain of the activity was and how long they thought it took. The results showed that intense strain or what the researchers called arousal led to higher time estimates than just faster heart rate. We like to think of ourselves as higher animals, with the brain driving the body; completely rational and independent of our ancient programming, but studies like these show our biology is affecting our perception of time, our decision-making and how we look at the world around us! We're just big dumb animals after all.

Sorry, my heartbeat was really high on that one, forgive me. This isn't the first story we've done about how your body controls you! The heart isn't alone in this! Amy has a video about how our gut instincts might actually be real, here . Can you feel your heartbeat? Do you have a burning science question? Ask us in the comments and subscribe so you can be sure and get the answer! Thanks for watching DNews.