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Brain study suggests we perceive time through activities, not by minutes or hours - C C - Jul 22, 2024

Brain study suggests we perceive time through activities, not by minutes or hours
https://gizmodo.com/brain-study-suggests-we-perceive-time-through-activities-not-by-minutes-or-hours-2000477110

INTRO: A recent rat-brain study offers insight into how the brain tells time, and its lead researcher believes the findings have practical applications for how we can cope with unpleasant things in life, or make the most of a good time.

By monitoring the brain wave activity of rats as they repeated behaviors over the course of an hour, researchers at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, found that we seem to perceive time through the number of experiences we have, and not by the passage of minutes or hours. Their findings, published this month in the peer-reviewed journal Current Biology, suggest there’s some truth to the old proverb, “time flies when you’re having fun.” Only, you might swap fun with another word — busy.

“We tell time in our own experience by things we do, things that happen to us,” lead author and UNLV psychology professor James Hyman said in a statement. “When we’re still and we’re bored, time goes very slowly because we’re not doing anything or nothing is happening. On the contrary, when a lot of events happen, each one of those activities is advancing our brains forward.” Thus, the researcher concluded, “the more that we do and the more that happens to us, the faster time goes.” (MORE - details)
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If there was really an objective "flow of time"(PDF), it would be "ticking or changing" at the rate of the subatomic events in atoms and the highest EM-wave frequencies. Not at the incredibly slow (in comparison) milliseconds metric of human consciousness.

What you're instead experiencing are increments of cognition -- what each chunk sequence of brain states is about (identifying and understanding) -- rather than the nature of the non-conscious (physical) form of existence outside your head. That, of course, falls out of excluding metaphysics like solipsism and monistic idealism which might globalize or objectify your specious or subjective sense of time -- which materialism or physicalism dismisses by default.

It's an issue of the applicable scientists and philosophers being consistent with their own ontic ideology choice, rather than confusedly cobbling together the latter with a variety of conflicting traditional beliefs.



RE: Brain study suggests we perceive time through activities, not by minutes or hours - Magical Realist - Jul 23, 2024

We live life in slow motion. It's like that Star Trek episode where the alien species is so accelerated in time that they can't be perceived and sees us as standing still and moving at glacially slow speeds.

"Nerve impulses, also known as action potentials, can travel at different speeds depending on the type of nerve fiber. In healthy nerves, electrical signals can travel up to 120 miles per hour (mph), but some nerve signals can be even faster, approaching speeds of 300 mph."--Internet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbf8izD_tRU