Posts Tagged ‘time’
Mind’s Clock Reacts as Two-Stage Rocket to Time Differences
July 22, 2009
The mind’s clock is a genetically inherent molecular pacemaker, which provides our entire body with a 24 hour rhythm. Natural fluctuations, such as the ones caused by season changes, can be handled easily by the mind’s clock, but our modern lifestyle stretches this natural balance to its very limits. An imbalanced mind clock can sometimes lead to serious dysfunction
, and cause illnesses such as depression. In most cases, however, the mind’s clock adjusts to the new circumstances; we know from experience that a jet lag disappears within a few days. How does the mind’s clock achieve this? The mind’s clock makes use of a two-stage mechanism in adapting to artificial time differences caused by, for instance, a transatlantic flight or working irregular shifts. In adapting to the time difference, the two halves of the suprachiasmatic nucleus in the brain, where the mind’s clock is located, play very different parts.
By (Universiteit Leiden)
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The experience of time
July 21, 2009Suggested by Pocholo Peralta (Plato On-line)
Time research has been a neglected topic in the cognitive neurosciences of the last decades: how do humans perceive time? How and where in the brain is time processed? This introductory paper provides an overview of the empirical and theoretical papers on the psychological and neural basis of time perception collected in this theme issue. Contributors from the fields of cognitive psychology, psychiatry, neurology and neuroanatomy tackle this complex question with a variety of techniques ranging from psychophysical and behavioural experiments to pharmacological interventions and functional neuroimaging. Several (and some new) models of how and where in the brain time is processed are presented in this unique collection of recent research that covers experienced time intervals from milliseconds to minutes. We hope this volume to be conducive in developing a better understanding of the sense of time as part of complex set of brain–body factors that include cognitive, emotional and body states.
By Marc Wittmann and Virginie van Wassenhove (The Royal Society)
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Bending Time’s Arrow
July 8, 2009
Psychologists suspect that this space-time continuum may be more than a social convention, an artifice that we all simply agree to. Perhaps the brain has wired our perceptions of space and time together for some reason. A team of researchers has been exploring this question in the laboratory, using an unusual pair of spectacles.
By Wray Herbert (We’re Only Human)
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Brain Time
July 1, 2009
The days of thinking of time as a river—evenly flowing, always advancing—are over. Time perception, just like vision, is a construction of the brain and is shockingly easy to manipulate experimentally. We all know about optical illusions, in which things appear different from how they really are; less well known is the world of temporal illusions. When you begin to look for temporal illusions, they appear everywhere. In the movie theater, you perceive a series of static images as a smoothly flowing scene. Or perhaps you’ve noticed when glancing at a clock that the second hand sometimes appears to take longer than normal to move to its next position—as though the clock were momentarily frozen.
By David M. Eagleman (Edge)
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World Science Festival: The Psychology of Time
June 18, 2009Suggested by Pocholo Peralta (Plato On-line)
Time is a constant in modern life. We waste it. We obsessively track it. We continually wonder “where it goes.” We run out of it. We never have enough of it. Neurologist Oliver Sacks, psychologist Daniel Gilbert, and psychologist and neuroscientist Warren Meck from Duke University gathered Saturday evening at the World Science Festival’s “Time the Familiar Stranger” event for a discussion on our most precious commodity. They addressed both complex questions such as the existentialism and relativity of “the present,” and more mundane topics such as why children must continually ask “are we there yet?” on long car trips.
By Discover Magazine
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The Time Emotion Paradox
June 11, 2009
Time flies when you’re having fun, but why? It’s curious if you think about it. Someone whose visual perception was affected by enjoyment would seem rather unusual but the fact that our ability to judge time changes dramatically when we enjoy ourselves seems perfectly unremarkable.
A recent article in the scientific journal Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society attempts to answer exactly this question by reviewing the evidence for the curious link between emotion and time perception.
“One of the greatest paradoxes in the field of time psychology is the time–emotion paradox. Over the last few decades, an increasing volume of data has been identified demonstrating the accuracy with which humans are able to estimate time. Confronted with this amazing ability, psychologists have supposed that humans, as other animals, possess a specific mechanism that allows them to measure time…”
By Mind Hacks
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Also follow the article: The Time Emotion Paradox By Silvie Droit-Volet and Sandrine Gil. (Scribd)
The present manuscript discusses the time–emotion paradox in time psychology: although humans are able to accurately estimate time as if they possess a specific mechanism that allows them to measure time (i.e. an internal clock), their representations of time are easily distorted by the context. Indeed, our sense of time depends on intrinsic context, such as the emotional state, and on extrinsic context, such as the rhythm of others’ activity. Existing studies on the relationships between emotion and time suggest that these contextual variations in subjective time do not result from the incorrect functioning of the internal clock but rather from the excellent ability of the internal clock to adapt to events in one’s environment. Finally, the fact that we live and move in time and that everything, every act, takes more or less time has often been neglected. Thus, there is no unique, homogeneous time but instead multiple experiences of time. Our subjective temporal distortions directly reflect the way our brain and body adapt to these multiple time scales.
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Rapid Perception – Slowing Time Down
May 6, 2009
Your spirit operates outside time and space. When there is an emergency where danger is about to approach you faster than you can normally sense, your spirit will compel you to act quickly without pondering. It directs you through your instinct and reflexes. Think of a time when you moved out of harms way in an instant and the move was so spontaneously it seems that everything just flowed in the moment. Your awareness of what was happening and your response happened without hesitation, but so quickly that it was almost together at the same time.
By MindReality.com
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What is relevant?
April 23, 2009
Has there ever been a time in your life when you have all of a sudden really wanted to achieve or buy something and then everyone else seems to also want it. It might also be that the thing that you want, whether that is a car or a job or maybe even an experience, you are starting to see it everywhere you go, on billboards, in magazines, people talking about it and it is on the television. Why is it now everywhere, now that you are interested in it, and yet earlier you did not notice it at all?
By Stacey T Pollock
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Why Does Time Go Faster As We Get Older?
February 25, 2009
It is a widely accepted adage that, “The older you get, the faster time seems to go.” But why should aging have this effect? After all, there is the parallel adage that, “Time flies when you are having fun.” But as we age, time flies whether we are having fun or not.
So what’s going on?
By Philip Yaffe (Searchwarp.com)
Do Past and Future Really Exist?
February 24, 2009
As every second ticks away, with every event that we experience, it turns into past, a moment that once was, but no longer exists. It is scientifically proven that memory is stored in the brain and that what we remember only encompasses around the average of eight percent of what we experience.
By Stacey T Pollock (Creation Theory Revised)
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