Why having fun makes time speed Scientists have come up with a theory for why time flies when you are having fun and drags when you are bored. Scans have shown that patterns of activity in the brain change depending on how we focus on a task. Concentrating on time passing, as we do when bored, will trigger brain activity which will make it seem as though the clock is ticking more slowly. The research, by the French Laboratory of Neurobiology and Cognition, is published in the magazine Science. In the study, 12 volunteers watched an image while researchers monitored their brain activity using MRI scans. Volunteers were given a variety of tasks. In one they were told to concentrate simply on the duration of an image, in another they were asked to focus on the colour, and in a third they were asked to concentrate on both duration and colour.