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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?
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.
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/
Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.
Time is assumed to be one of the dimensions we live in, what if it's only visible from our perspective in our universe but not visible at all from an outside observer? To an outside observer our universe may be just an instant flash and impossible to measure in their notion of time.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
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?
> 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..
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!
It's not 'assumed' any more than distance is assumed. Our universe has parameters. Light travels at a constant speed, or at a constant distance, or at a constant time - it's all the same, just different perspectives. Distance is a function of time or light, or lightspeed is a function of distance - these are just words the apes trip on as they're trying to understand reality in the terms of forests, railroads, and stars.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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 isn't about the nature of time, it's about perception of it. I don't recall Einstein ever discussing the neurology of time perception....
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
...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.
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?