The Neural Basis of Time Perception: A Complex and Subjective Relationship

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In summary, the philosopher Kant said that time and space are nothing more than how the intellect orders our perceptions. We perceive time by comparing one ordered set with another and judging on their relative "rate of occurrence".
  • #1
StewieGriffin
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How do we perceive the Time?
 
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  • #2
relative to how fast your going :)
 
  • #3
This is mostly a philosophical question I think.
Do we perceive time? I am not watching, hearing or feeling time. We perceive "the world" and the changes in it. Things in my memory seem to have happened "earlier in time" than things I am perceiving now and different things in my memory also seem to have an order as to what happened earlier and what happened later. Even tough I may sometimes mix this order up when trying to remember things, I still feel that there exists a proper order. I guess that experiencing our memories as having such order comes closest to something that might be called "perception of time".

The philosopher Kant famously said something along the lines:
"time and space are nothing more than the way the intellect orders our perceptions".
 
  • #4
StewieGriffin said:
How do we perceive the Time?



I think the reason we perceive time as passing is because we are subjected to those terrible laws of thermodynamics and decay!

I suspect that if we didn't age, grow, change --That is to say once we had our body, the biochemical reactions which governed it were invariant, then we wouldn't think of time as "passing" in the way that we do now.


I also suspect, as someone else mentioned that, how we view time is really an artifact of how neurophysiology works. For example, in order to learn by trial and error, our nervous system must be capable of remembering prior trials. Animals which learn then, have had to develop a nervous system which can associate some prior trial stored somewhere, with a probable outcome of whatever action you maybe pursuing.

This also means we've had to evolve the ability to establish cause-effect relationships and casual-relationships. Which means our nervous systems need to be able to sort the "past" from the now and in the case of some animals the "future" (applying that knowledge toward predicted outcomes).

I suspect that by ordering these experiences like this, it gives rise to a perception of a "flowing, linear time line"--Which we "think" we experience.
 
  • #5
I was about to agree with you as this was my own opinion too, but it just came to me: How do we perceive the "rate" of the passage of time? I like to propose that we do it by comparing one ordered set with another, but then it comes the question of: What is the structure I define on these ordered sets that enables me to compare them and judge on their relative "rate of occurrence"? -for which I have no answer right now.
 
  • #6
StewieGriffin said:
I was about to agree with you as this was my own opinion too, but it just came to me: How do we perceive the "rate" of the passage of time? I like to propose that we do it by comparing one ordered set with another, but then it comes the question of: What is the structure I define on these ordered sets that enables me to compare them and judge on their relative "rate of occurrence"? -for which I have no answer right now.
Ever heard of a clock?

Perhaps if you do a search on the history of how humans decided to "tell time" and how they agreed to divide time up according to the length of a day, it might help you. It's really very easy to understand.
 
  • #7
Evo said:
Ever heard of a clock?

Perhaps if you do a search on the history of how humans decided to "tell time" and how they agreed to divide time up according to the length of a day, it might help you. It's really very easy to understand.

:uhh: That was funny (sort of);
:shy: but "funny" was ALL that it could be.
 
  • #8
StewieGriffin said:
:uhh: That was funny (sort of);
:shy: but "funny" was ALL that it could be.
I'm quite serious. Biologically, humans have adapted to day/night patterns based on the length of a day here on earth. Our mechanical clocks are based on the length of a day. How we biologically perceive time is very closely tied to the length of a day. People that are completely obscured from daylight and knowledge of time will slightly shift their circadian rythms, but not drastically.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm
 
  • #9
You can say that our perception of time is tied to our sense of having a rate of action. So we get used to being able to doing things at a certain rate (like hitting tennis balls, generating mental images, whatever) and these actions connect to make a flow of changing experience.

Which is why time drags when you are not engaged in a rapid flow of events and speeds past when you are in a flow of activity.

It is more complicated than that of course. You can get into the role of the basal ganglia and cerebellum if you want to talk neurology. But basically we don't experience time in some stand back and measure it way. It is all about the rate at which we can create actual change - which works out at around two or three attention shifts per second.
 
  • #10
Evo said:
I'm quite serious. Biologically, humans have adapted to day/night patterns based on the length of a day here on earth. Our mechanical clocks are based on the length of a day. How we biologically perceive time is very closely tied to the length of a day. People that are completely obscured from daylight and knowledge of time will slightly shift their circadian rythms, but not drastically.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm

No Evo; with all due respect, the way you think you perceive the time is the way my stomach does; perhaps the issue I am posing here is more cognitive rather than biological -at least in the sense and level you employ it.
 
  • #11
apeiron said:
You can say that our perception of time is tied to our sense of having a rate of action. So we get used to being able to doing things at a certain rate (like hitting tennis balls, generating mental images, whatever) and these actions connect to make a flow of changing experience.

Which is why time drags when you are not engaged in a rapid flow of events and speeds past when you are in a flow of activity.

It is more complicated than that of course. You can get into the role of the basal ganglia and cerebellum if you want to talk neurology. But basically we don't experience time in some stand back and measure it way. It is all about the rate at which we can create actual change - which works out at around two or three attention shifts per second.

Implicit in your concept of "rate" is "time" again; to me it is more like you are utilizing the notion of time to define the very same thing.
 
  • #12
Stewie, you asked an extremely vague question in the biology forum.

Perhaps you should clearly explain in detail exactly what you want to know rather than make us play a guessing game. Start off by explaining what you know about what you are trying to ask so we have some idea of your level of knowledge.

Are you asking what part of the brain we utilize to perceive time and how the brain works in order to process that information?
 
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  • #13
StewieGriffin said:
I was about to agree with you as this was my own opinion too, but it just came to me: How do we perceive the "rate" of the passage of time? I like to propose that we do it by comparing one ordered set with another, but then it comes the question of: What is the structure I define on these ordered sets that enables me to compare them and judge on their relative "rate of occurrence"? -for which I have no answer right now.

Evo said:
Stewie, you asked an extremely vague question in the biology forum.

Perhaps you should clearly explain in detail exactly what you want to know rather than make us play a guessing game.

Evo, I explained my point clearly on the very quote you picked up to reply to at first o:)
 
  • #14
StewieGriffin said:
Implicit in your concept of "rate" is "time" again; to me it is more like you are utilizing the notion of time to define the very same thing.

Not really. Implicit in rate is sequence. First there is the bare capacity for change. Then there is a capacity for a rate of change - a succession of changes. So we have a feeling of traveling through a world where many things were possible, but we were carving a clear trail of particular steps.

Does a worm experience time? No, because it does not have the neural capacity to make a series of cognitive shifts of state.

Bio-rhythms and other kinds of endogenous clocks are a kind of time perception, but they are repetitive. Cyclic. You keep ending up in the same place. So there is a cycling kind of change, but not a succession of changes, each moment being unique as it is with attentional shifts.
 
  • #15
StewieGriffin said:
Evo, I explained my point clearly on the very quote you picked up to reply to at first o:)
Stewie, when I sent your post
was about to agree with you as this was my own opinion too, but it just came to me: How do we perceive the "rate" of the passage of time? I like to propose that we do it by comparing one ordered set with another, but then it comes the question of: What is the structure I define on these ordered sets that enables me to compare them and judge on their relative "rate of occurrence"? -for which I have no answer right now.
to a physics mentor, they weren't sure what you meant either. They wondered if you meant the distance
1 second is however far light travels in that interval
.

You want to compare one ordered set of what with what? To achieve what?
 
  • #16
StewieGriffin said:
I was about to agree with you as this was my own opinion too, but it just came to me: How do we perceive the "rate" of the passage of time? I like to propose that we do it by comparing one ordered set with another, but then it comes the question of: What is the structure I define on these ordered sets that enables me to compare them and judge on their relative "rate of occurrence"? -for which I have no answer right now.

Sorry, I missed this clarification.

The answer would still be that the rate is set by neurology. Attention shifts have a natural, inherent, rate. Because that would not change from one day to the next, you have a stable baseline against which to make such judgements.

It is not about the rate at which events occur, but the maximum rate at which we can assimilate them. And changes in our rate of assimilation (contrasts between doing lots, or doing little) leads us to feel that the passage time is psychologically different.
 
  • #17
That may be it, I'll bow out. But, I think stewie has a deeper question he's trying to express and I'm too dead tired to help.

Time perception can vary greatly. If you are in pain, the time seemingly drags on forever. If you are standing before a firing squad the same amount of time is over in the blink of an eye.

When I fell down the stairs and was certain I was going to break my neck and die, my fall lasted long enough for me to think about cleaning the house, having people over to mourn, my kids, my insurance policies, how much money would go to each, selling the house, caretakers, etc... in real time under 2 seconds elapsed. It seems the amount of information you can process and remember greatly increases while under such great stress.
 
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  • #18
Let me clarify my point and also share my thoughts -thanks to apeiron's hint- on the issue of rate:

Take the following two sequences:

1,1,2,2,3,3
1,1,2,3,4,4

I think what we do is to first use an ordering parameter to assign an ordering relation to our sense of variation of spatial configuration1 of the surrounding world -that is, sequential perception of distinguishable events, upon which we can establish a sense of time. As for the rate, we put different such orderings on a "lattice" and mutually (after all we are binary creatures) compare how larger is the change of ordering parameter around (in a small interval containing) the local point of interest (for example at the fourth column in the above two-row lattice).

Update 1: Of course we do not need the ordering parameter for perception of time, the sequential occurrence/cognition of (distinguishable) events automatically does that; but in this scheme, it is needed for comparing the rates.

Code:
1- Without loss of generality, I am assuming that here, sight is the only means of perception of the external world.
 
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  • #19
Evo said:
It seems the amount of information you can process and remember greatly increases while under such great stress.

The feeling of time halting in such situations is more to do with the fact that you cannot act, I believe.

Normally, attention focuses you in on a definite response, and by so doing excludes many other potential responses. And so time flows as one definite attentional step after another (the flights and perchings of Jamesian psychology).

However in moments of high arousal, but also an inability to act - such as a car crash - you have a lot of thoughts being aroused at the same time, a flood of responses, and not the usual suppression of choices that leads to a state of focused, intentional, response.

So there may be more information (a flood of possible thoughts forming) but little actual processing, in the sense of zeroing in on some particular response.
 
  • #20
to add, and reinforce the neurological evolutionary aspect,
"...the collection of neural structures that comprises the hippocampal formation in the medial temporal lobe..," play an important role in perception of time.

from an article found at 'Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science
Volume 42, Number 2, Perception of Time and Causation Through the Kinesthesia of Intentional Action, Walter J. Freeman'
 
  • #21
May I offer an hypothesis:

My understanding is that neurons "integrate". They sum up past behavior and that sum influences their present behavior. This integration is always changing, even when we're sleeping and it's value is constantly affecting our neural circuitry by changing synapses in our brain. So consider watching a minute pass by on a clock. During that one minute, some neural pathway in the brain has changed; some synapse has grown stronger or weaker perhaps. That in turn affects other pathways that are linked or connected to those neurons. The overall dynamic state of the brain is altered (slightly) by that passage of time. Our perception of that changing dynamics, how we "feel" this changing physiology, may be how we perceive time.
 
  • #22
jackmell said:
May I offer an hypothesis:

My understanding is that neurons "integrate". They sum up past behavior and that sum influences their present behavior. This integration is always changing, even when we're sleeping and it's value is constantly affecting our neural circuitry by changing synapses in our brain. So consider watching a minute pass by on a clock. During that one minute, some neural pathway in the brain has changed; some synapse has grown stronger or weaker perhaps. That in turn affects other pathways that are linked or connected to those neurons. The overall dynamic state of the brain is altered (slightly) by that passage of time. Our perception of that changing dynamics, how we "feel" this changing physiology, may be how we perceive time.

I can't reason this way -ignorance, been to doctor1, medications hurt my stomach- but I think we cannot be real-time conscious of the dynamics of our (personal) neural structure, can we?

Update: What I am trying to say/support is that we conclude a sense of time/passage from our previously aggregated perceptive data.

Code:
1- No lollipop.
 
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  • #23
StewieGriffin said:
I can't reason this way -ignorance, been to doctor, medications hurt my stomach- but I think we cannot be real-time conscious of the dynamics of our (personal) neural structure, can we?

Update: What I am trying to say/support is that we conclude a sense of time/passage from our previously aggregated perceptive data.

Why not Stewie? I believe consciousness is precisely just (the sum total of) that realization. Or rather, it's an emergent property of the sum total of our neural dynamics.
 
  • #24
jackmell said:
Why not Stewie? I believe consciousness is precisely just (the sum total of) that realization. Or rather, it's an emergent property of the sum total of our neural dynamics.

Jack, do you mean we are "real-time" conscious of the dynamics?

On a side note, I was just thinking of how do we basically "differentiate"? That's the very building block of our intellectual existence, but yet, do we really differentiate between two things at the very "same time"? And if so, what do we exactly/algorithmically mean by that term -at the cognitive level.
 
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  • #25
StewieGriffin said:
Jack, do you mean we are "real-time" conscious of the dynamics?

On a side note, I was just thinking of how do we basically "differentiate"? That's the very building block of our intellectual existence, but yet, do we really differentiate between two things at the very "same time"? And if so, what do we exactly/algorithmically mean by that term -at the cognitive level.

Maybe you should have said, "do you mean to suggest" because I certainly do not know for sure but let me try to defend my hypothesis: What exactly is memory? Let me think about what I did yesterday? That sets off neurons firing in my brain. I believe the act of memory recall is the act of the firing dynamics entering a basin of attraction of a strange attractor. You know about that owl-eye looking attractor that is one of the icons of Chaos Theory right? That one too has a basin of attraction surrounding the attractor which if the dynamics enters the basin, it falls into the attractor. Now imagine a much, much more complicated dynamic system such as the brain. It too I believe has attractors and the act of memory recall, just the thought of "now what was I doing yesterday" alters the dynamic state of the brain causing the firing patterns of some neural assemblies to fall into "attractors" and the resulting dynamics of such attractors, the firing patterns, mimick or resemble the conscious awareness of how I experienced yesterday so that I can "recall" it.

But I'm experiencing other things as well and those things likewise alter the dynamics of the brain and perhaps push the dynamics of that memory recall, outside of it's attractor, so that I now experience other "thoughts".

Those changing "thoughts", how the brain goes in and out of dynamic "attractors" as we experience our existence, may be the basis of experiencing time.

Since the forum does not favor speculation, I should add that a leading neuroscientist, Terrence Senjnowski, author of the "Computational Brain" has suggested that that brain may use strange attractors in memory recall. Here's a citation which I believe experimentally (albeit a little gruesome), shows how the brain could be creating attractors. I worked with it a long time ago and can't discuss it much now though without reviewing which I don't want to do.

http://sulcus.berkeley.edu/FreemanWWW/manuscripts/IC8/87.html
 
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  • #26
Let me relabel those attractors as "points of focus", then:

1- These points of focus can be shifted both by external and internal agents, that's how we manage to "learn", I suppose.

2- If I am real-time conscious of the dynamics, then it means [how to put this...aha!] I have chosen a third-person point of view, which in turn is implicative of my disassociation from my state of conscious being; contradiction. What I am conscious of is either "my past" or my ignorance of my present -assuming I have figured already what "present" is- state I am interested in -third possibility: I am attributing something irrelevant/untrue to the current dynamics of my neural system.
 
  • #27
This is also a good article.

Time and the Brain: How Subjective Time Relates to Neural Time

Brains have a difficult problem to solve. Signals from different modalities are processed at different speeds in distant neural regions, but to be useful to the organism as a whole, these signals must become aligned in time and correctly tagged to outside events (Eagleman, 2005b). Understanding the timing of events, such as a motor act followed by a sensory consequence, is critical for moving, speaking, determining causality, and decoding the barrage of temporal patterns at our sensory receptors.

Despite its importance to behavior and perception, the neural bases of time perception remain shrouded in mystery. Scattered confederacies of investigators have been interested in time for decades, but only in the past few years has a concerted effort been applied to old problems. Now, experimental psychology is striving to understand how animals perceive and encode temporal intervals, whereas physiology, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and EEG unmask how neurons and brain regions underlie temporal computations. In this review, we sketch parts of an emerging picture and highlight remaining confusions about time in the brain. Some of the overarching questions are as follows: How do brains encode and decode information that streams in through time? How are signals entering various brain regions at varied times coordinated with one another? What is the temporal precision with which perception represents the outside world? How are intervals, durations, and sequences coded in the brain? What factors (causality, attention, adrenaline, or eye movements) influence temporal judgments and why? Does the brain constantly recalibrate its time perception? In this mini-symposium, we illustrate different experimental approaches that attempt to shine light on these questions and others.
Continued...

http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/25/45/10369
 
  • #28
Evo said:
This is also a good article.

Time and the Brain: How Subjective Time Relates to Neural Time

Continued...

http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/25/45/10369
from the article
"At the level of the behaving animal, experiments in monkeys have shown that posterior parietal neurons can encode signals related to the perception of time. Neurons in lateral intraparietal area (LIP) seem to represent the passage of time relative to a remembered standard duration (Leon and Shadlen, 2003)"

It seems to me that there are many inputs that can trigger different neural circuits and focus attention to "record" the conditions of the senses. Whereas some are recording, some are actively predicting the possibility of futures. Time is wired into the neural circuits as a tool for understanding casuality. Time is illusory and very tangible at the same time, just like a photon (I meant that just as a simile, but maybe the link between light and time should be explored. Blind vs deaf perception of time?)
The more I'm reading the more subjective time seems. Time is not linear or constant but "objective" time probably exists, unfortunately the perception of it is again inherently subjective. Damn.
Sorry, but the technical and logical explanation of how time is perceived that you're looking is very elusive to me.
 
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What is time perception?

Time perception refers to the subjective experience of time passing. It is how we perceive the passage of time, including how fast or slow time seems to be moving.

How does our brain perceive time?

Our brain perceives time through a complex process involving multiple brain regions, including the prefrontal cortex, cerebellum, and basal ganglia. These areas work together to process and integrate information from our senses and create our perception of time.

What factors influence our perception of time?

There are many factors that can influence our perception of time, including age, emotions, attention, and external stimuli. For example, time may seem to pass more quickly when we are engaged in a fun activity, while it may seem to slow down when we are bored or anxious.

Can we control our perception of time?

While we cannot directly control our perception of time, we can influence it through various techniques such as mindfulness, meditation, and changing our daily routines. These practices can help us become more aware of our perception of time and potentially alter it in certain situations.

Why does time seem to speed up as we get older?

There are several theories as to why time seems to pass more quickly as we age. One is that our perception of time is relative to our lifespan, so as we get older, a year becomes a smaller portion of our overall life experience. Additionally, as we age, we tend to have more routine and less novel experiences, which can make time feel like it is passing more quickly.

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