The Time Percept

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The Time Percept

Or, If a Clock Ticks in a Forest and No One is Around to See it, Does Time Still Pass?

Time is the most elusive physical element. Despite familiarity with the concept, time is difficult to describe. Time is always the underlying assumption in our descriptions of the universe. In physics, it remains the largest barrier to the unification of relativity and quantum theory; some physicists believe time will have to be dismissed altogether if that unification is to occur (1). In more common experience, time appears to be an immutable and often lamented truth; who hasn't wished to "have more time," or to be able to "go back and do it over?"

But does time exist, or is it the creation of a brain eager to render input comprehensible? Examples abound of the brain's ability to invent perception. Color is created entirely by the brain; no single physical phenomenon is responsible for a specific color (2). Similarly, the lonely tree falling in a forest does not make a noise because no one hears the sound. If the brain can invent color and noise, can it also invent time? Or in other words, is time a function of reality or a function of our brains?

The situation is somewhat worse for time than for color or noise, in fact. Whereas light and sound can be objectively observed, time can only be inferred from events; even the motion of a clock is merely a series of events. Einstein's Relativity Theory (3), (4) may be extended to propose that "time" is created by the brain to explain motion through a series of stationary and discontinuous universes. In this way, the "percept of time" would be similar to the percept of motion created by watching a series of still pictures in a movie theater (1). It has also been suggeste...

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...gton, D.L., K.Y. Haaland, and R.T. Knight, 1998, in the Journal of Neuroscience, 18(3):1085-1095.

http://www.jneurosci.org/

11) Toward a neurobiology of temporal cognition: advances and challenges, by Gibbon, John, Chara Malapani, Corby L. Dale, and CR Gallistel, 1997, in Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 7:170-184, on BioMedNet.

http://www.bmn.com/

12) Neuropharmacology of timing and time perception, by WH Meck, 1996, in Cognitive Brain Research, 3(3-4):227-42, on PubMed.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=retrieve&db=pubmed&list_uids=8806025&dopt=Abstract

13) Locating a mouse by its sound: the value of having two ears, from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 1997.

http://www.hhmi.org/senses/c220.html

14) Can neurobiology teach us anything about consciousness?, by Patricia Smith Churchland, 1995.

http://www.hhmi.org/senses/c220.html

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