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New Clues To How the Brain Maps Time (quantamagazine.org)
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from Quanta Magazine: Our brains have an extraordinary ability to monitor time. A driver can judge just how much time is left to run a yellow light; a dancer can keep a beat down to the millisecond. But exactly how the brain tracks time is still a mystery. Researchers have defined the brain areas involved in movement, memory, color vision and other functions, but not the ones that monitor time. Indeed, our neural timekeeper has proved so elusive that most scientists assume this mechanism is distributed throughout the brain, with different regions using different monitors to keep track of time according to their needs.
Over the last few years, a handful of researchers have compiled growing evidence that the same cells that monitor an individual's location in space also mark the passage of time. This suggests that two brain regions — the hippocampus and the entorhinal cortex, both famous for their role in memory and navigation — can also act as a sort of timer.
Over the last few years, a handful of researchers have compiled growing evidence that the same cells that monitor an individual's location in space also mark the passage of time. This suggests that two brain regions — the hippocampus and the entorhinal cortex, both famous for their role in memory and navigation — can also act as a sort of timer.
And they stitch sensory input together to provide the illusion of continuity to the various bits. It's the only way the entire system could possibly maintain the level of cohesion it does.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
That is the way of their kind.
Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.
The best part is we're discussing the brain's timekeeping mechanisms -- keep in mind that your sensory perception has a built-in time delay.
It seems to me that the relativity of time seems to decrease with age and experience. In School five minutes could be an eternity while when you were having fun it went in a flash.
But now when I'm older it seems to me that I have a reasonable time awareness most of the time, waking up when it's time to wake up, knowing that it's time to stop doing what I'm doing when it's time to do something else and so on.
Overall it seems to me that the brain has now linked tasks to time awareness even without really thinking of it. Only rarely when the task at hand requires a very high level of attention it's easy to lose track of time.
The Slashdot quote of the moment seems to fit this subject too: "Promptness is its own reward, if one lives by the clock instead of the sword."
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
No, you're just not smart enough to comprehend what is going on.
is it possible that those areas of the brain are associated with the concept of quantity of any kind (length, weight, number) and that this is just another measure, maybe a count of other neural activity in some way. After all, perception of time seems to vary considerably depending on what's going on.
Nullius in verba
No, it's just turning into one of these WTF threads that you see all to often when there's a major election coming up. A few months after the election it will be quiet again when it comes to political threads unless something major happens.
Deal with it.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
And against scientific thinking. For the rest of us, we recoil in horror at their kind.
No u just stupid
Considering time is directly linked to movement through space it's not surprising our brains use the same area to measure and remember both.
When your are sitting on a turned on oven burner, your brain maps time slow. When you are on holiday or otherwise enjoying yourself, your brain maps time fast.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
https://www.xkcd.com/1524/
its a hugcircle moran. Unlike u we dont put people in corners
Their kind just doesn't know any better.
Physicists and philosophers have not been any more successful, really
"most scientists assume this mechanism is distributed throughout the brain, with different regions using different monitors to keep track of time according to their needs"
Or maybe this mechanism is distributed throughout everything, all at once, and keeping track of time is just a perceived phenomenological need. ...or whatever that means.... string cheese, anyone?
Seems to slow down my time by ~2x
I.e. The 30sec electric toothbrush cycle seems... busted. Also, timed distance fails, you turn too soon. I.e. Turning towards a door in a dark corridor you know well. Try it sometime, see whether you can estimate a minute.
Considering they think we don't know they're stacking people like cordwood at Gitmo, they're pretty stupid.
Or are you just given the ability from God to do more as you grow older? Minus Dr. Who type Time travel.
This. Anyone self aware isn't one of them.
What's wrong with a hugbox? I don't understand the point you're trying to make.
The brain has no concept of time. It only has a concept of events. Time is merely the absence of events and the relative structure of events that creates. So, if I want to measure a minute, I need to think of a series of rather predictable events. And that is what the brain does to measure and understand time.
> Our brains have an extraordinary ability to monitor time.
If you can't manage seeing speed, either you get eaten or you starve because you cannot eat - talking reptiles, insects, even much lower. You are prey or looking for prey (redundant - not sure for what that's good).
Glad somebody is figuring out the how's after all that time it exists..
I once tried to locate timing genes due to the shape of the protein.... I cant remember the amino acid sequence I was after. Hoping to get back into that project someday. It would be the most important gene in the genome. Worthy of a patent.
Maybe within 10 milliseconds, perhaps... but a millisecond is far too brief a duration for a human being to assess or even respond with muscle memory.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Of course the same area tracks time and space. The space-time continuum is 4 dimensional. Would you expect a different brain region to track the X axis and one to track the Y axis? :-)
Put a brain scanner in the DMV office and determine which regions of the brain shut down, making it seem like you are stuck there forever. Mystery solved.
Republucan map time since they have no brain?
They use bible passages. Less accurate but more satisfying.
Can't believe I wasted my extra valuable time reading that..
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Happens a couple of times per month. Example I'll set the alarm to 7:50 and I'll wake up on my own at about 7:46~ ish. I just feel the need to wake up at that moment and feel nervous if I try to sleep on. My alarm times vary, but still I regularly beat the alarm even on non-pattern times. I guess the only reason why I do this is because I hate being startled by the alarm clock.
And I'm sure plenty of people here have woken up in a dark room and guessed the time down to ~15minutes error before.
space, time... spacetime
Einstein was right, in more ways than one
exactly. set your microwave and sit down to watch tv while it's heating up. bet you get up to check it right before it beeps
What's wrong with a hugbox?
I can't imagine a Beowulf cluster of them, that's what.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Can't believe I wasted my extra valuable time reading that..
Ah, but if you RTFA, you'll find that what you were wasting was just extra valuable fourth-dimensional-mindspace....
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
This is just off the cuff, but maybe a combination of memory networks, the reticular cortex, and a bunch of sensors that have regular or circadian rhythms?
...is our brain's ability to portray simultaneity.
If you touch a person's toe and nose at the same time, the speed-of-travel for that signal and significantly different distances that signal travels SHOULD result in a noticeable lag between the two, but doesn't; even when blindfolded, a person feels them at the same time.
How is this possible?
At first glance, one might assume the brain is 'pausing' the nose-signal to wait for the toe-signal. But how does it know to DO this, when it doesn't know that a toe signal is even coming?
The best theory I've heard so far is that EVERY sensory input is delayed for the amount of time it would take the furthest signal to reach the brain, and then assembled into a coherent stream-of-time order as if time-stamped (but AFAIK there's no trace of a time-stamp signal in nerve signals).
-Styopa
Not many of the drivers that I've seen. Light turns red and 3 more cars go zipping through.
The US govt pays people en masse to write pro-liberal/commie messages on popular boards, in the hopes that the liberal way of thinking will rub off on the masses.
Go purple team. I like purple, and puppies. Orange team hates puppies, and America. Mauve team doesn't know they aren't a team.
I can't see how going without a watch entirely is practical when you have to catch a bus at a particular minute, and if you miss one, it's an hour wait for the next. Or did you already have a car and enough income to fuel and insure it by 18?