The world's most accurate clocks run at a steady pace, deviating by only one second every 300 million years, but the human brain has inserted these rhythmic seconds into its own conception of time, arbitrarily stretching and compressing every minute and second. But why can't the brain be as accurate as a normal clock? In other words, why are happy times always so short and boring times always so long? How the brain perceives time depends on its expected value. Shadron, a neuroscientist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City, said that assuming something has not yet happened, the brain can make up the possibility that it will happen.
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Shadrund said every idea has a variety of "horizons." For example, in a book, the horizon is at the "end" of each syllable, the "end" of each word, the "end" of the next sentence, and so on. The brain makes presets based on what we expect from these horizons. When you're fully engaged in something, the brain anticipates the "point" and sees the horizons of both the nearby and the farr points, which makes us feel as if time is getting fast. But when you're bored, the closer horizon you expect is similar to the end of a sentence, not the end of the whole story, and these horizons are not intertwined, and you feel like you can never see the head, as if you are spending the seconds like a year (like the last 2 minutes before class or work).
"It's almost certain that there are numerous timing mechanisms in the brain," adds Patton, a neuroscientist from Portugal's Private Biomedical Research Foundation, whose subjective timing mechanisms are not related to the biological clock. One of these mechanisms involves the speed at which brain cells activate each other to form a network when you are engaged in an activity. Patton and his team found in rodents that the faster these neuronal channels form, the faster we perceive the passage of time.
Another mechanism is related to chemicals in the brain. Paton and his team found in rodents that there is a group of neurons that release dopamine that affect the brain's perception of time. When you're happy, these cells are more active and release large amounts of dopamine, and your brain thinks time passes faster. When you're unhappy, these cells don't release dopamine, and time seems to slow down. It's unclear why our brains make mistakes in tracking time. But Patton thinks this could be an evolutionary advantage: "Life is a series of choices to go or stay. "This intrinsic sense of time is beneficial in helping an animal decide when and where it stays."
Igman, an assistant professor of psychology and public mental health and population science at Stanford University, says that when you look back, the duration of an event you perceive has to do with the way your brain stores memories. He said the network of neurons storing new memories is denser than the network of neurons that store less novel memories. When you look back, the denser network of neurons can make the memory seem to last longer. For example, if you recall a long flight, but you fly it a lot, you may remember spending less time on the road than you actually did at the time, because your brain didn't store too many memories.