Brain and Time

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• I want to read (blu3mo)

General Impressions:

• It breaks down the ambiguous concept of “time” into specific concepts that have clear meanings in the biological mechanism.
  • There are various concepts that are helpful, for example, prospective timing.

Chapter 1:

• Both physics and neuroscience become complicated when considering time.
  • As we understand periodicity and calculus, we start to treat time in physics.
• I’m curious about how the knowledge of time in physics is involved (blu3mo).
• Presentism vs Eternalism p12
  • This is similar to coordinate vs position.
  • The way physics and cognitive science perceive time is actually different, interesting.
  • I tend to have an eternalistic perspective because I’ve been dealing with physics time for a long time, right? (blu3mo)
  • The point is whether time other than the subjective “now” objectively “exists”.
    • Which position is “other than now exists subjectively”?
• Time tends to have various meanings.
  • The previous conflict is also like that.
  • Essential time, clock time, subjective time.
  • It’s interesting to separate clock time from essential time (blu3mo).
    • Maybe because it is a perceived time (blu3mo).

• The brain is a time machine.

  • Is it saying that the brain can imagine the future of time through images?
  • Is that really significant? (blu3mo)

Chapter 2:

• The concept of a time machine was born after the popularity of Eternalism in physics.
  • Is this time perspective something acquired? (blu3mo)
• “The brain is a time machine.”
  • It claims that the act of looking back at the past or imagining the future is “mental time travel”.
    • Hmm, it’s interesting, but I don’t really understand the feeling of calling it time travel (blu3mo).
  • The importance of temporal proximity.
    • From Hume’s lineage.
      • Causality, temporal and spatial proximity.
        • This is causality in relativity, right? (blu3mo)
    • Classical conditioning
      • Are there non-classical ones too? (blu3mo)
    • It is difficult to find causality when time is far apart, but humans can do it to some extent through mental time travel p30.
  • Causal relationships at the synaptic level.
    • STDP p34

Chapter 3:

• The scale of time in the brain varies depending on the purpose.
  • Circadian rhythms, for example.
• Clocks are necessary for temporal coordination.
  • For both humans in factories and cells.
  • Or for coordination with the environment (such as photosynthesis during the day).
• There are circadian clocks at the cellular level, which form periodic loops through the transcription of DNA/RNA.
• I imagine multiple independent clocks with different scales, such as days, hours, minutes, and seconds p60.
  • If clocks are made using periodic loops, it makes sense.
• If you feel unwell due to an irregular lifestyle or on Mars, it might be easier to have an internal clock? I’m curious about what would happen to the body if we did that.

Chapter 4:

• In addition to measuring time like in the previous chapter, there is also a “perceived” time.
  • Slow-motion effect.
  • The feeling that time passes quickly.
• Prospective timing, retrospective timing.
  • The former: constantly measuring the elapsed time internally and referring to an internal stopwatch.
  • The latter: thinking about the elapsed time based on memory when asked, “How long ago was x?”
  • The mechanism also differs depending on the timing of measurement.
  • These two may not be binary but continuous? (blu3mo)
    • How frequently one is conscious of the elapsed time.
  • Retrospective timing is influenced by cognitive load.
    • If the content of the experience is intense, that time feels longer, for example.
  • It’s interesting how it changes in experiments (blu3mo).