Tuesday, January 5, 2010
The Brain and Time
Welcome Back! I'd like you to read the following article on the brain and how it interprets time. The article raises several very good points about how events and goals impact our ability to remember with accuracy. Please respond to at least two of the ideas discussed in the article and give some personal examples of evidence either supporting or refuting the claims. I will be back for class Thursday. See you then.
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One idea was that when needed, the brain will condense time, an example of this would be, when my brother was in a coma for around 3 months, he woke up having no idea that he had been out for any more than a day.
ReplyDeleteAnother idea was that when you are working on something boring such as doing your taxes, your brain seems to drag out time, making this somewhat short task feel like much longer. An example of this would be, doing notes in math class, which i find very boring, takes 1 hour and 30 minutes, but feels like 3 or 4 hours.
I agree with this statement that long periods of elapsed time are condensed by the brain and stimulants like caffeine and nicotine serve as ways to only quicken this time of the day. For example, I feel looking back at the years I attended school, the years went by somewhat fast; however, as I live life from day to day while attending school the hours creep by pretty slowly. I feel this feeling of time is due to how the brain keeps time. I also find it easier to remember big events in my life; however, I have trouble remembering school routines that I have done my freshman and sophomore year. I also find sitting in a classroom by a hour and a half is very boring and sluggishly slow; however, the time I spend at a party or just hanging out on the weekend with my friends goes by rather fast. In fact it feels like the whole weekend goes fast and I have to struggle through another entire school week until the weekend comes again to only disappoint me by going quick again.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the interpretation that "if very few events come to mind, then the perception of time does not persist." I can personally relates to this because every time I try to think back of a later event, it seems as though it was just occurred yesterday. In other words, I think that my mind works like a puzzle. Each piece of event or memory is a piece of a puzzle waiting to be connected. And, if, for some apparent reason that I do not remember a certain event, it seems as though it had not occurred at all; thus make it seems as though the lost time of that particular lost event did not even happen. This also supports the point that the author was trying to make about time and memory--It depends on "the way it fixes the relative timing of events depends on memory."
ReplyDeleteI just lost the entire post.
ReplyDeleteanyway, now to repost.
I found that two curious things were that time seems to drag on during complex tasks, and to take little time for fun or simple tasks, and that positive events seem to be much more recent then negative ones. I can personally relate to both of these points, especially the first. I find often that time drags on for me when i'm doing a complex, and/or boring task, perhaps because more of my mental effort is taken up by it. I also seem to recall positive events more clearly, as though they are more recent, than negative events. for example, I can recall when I got a 4-wheeler as though it was yesterday, though it was several years ago now. I must wonder, is there a parallel between traveling long distances and thinking? When you take two journeys of the same distance, the one on which you cover the distance SLOWER will seem to take up less time. on the other hand, the opposite is true of traveling that same distance very quickly. That is assuming of course that you cannot look at a clock, and that the speeds aren't so incredibly disproportionate that it's obvious which is longer or shorter.
now i'm rambling.
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One of the theories was that when emotional events take place, they seem to be more recent than they actually are. This is very true because when I got accepted to my number one college, even after all this time that has passed it still feels like it was just yesterday. Another theory was that when you do things that are boring, time drags and when your doing something interesting time flies. I agree because in some classes, the hour and a half seems so long. However, in fun classes, it seems like they end too soon.
ReplyDelete"The brain may have more control of passing time than people may know." Hmmm. I can't really take a stance on this opinion as I don't understand what is trying to be said. Is this conscious control? One would think that this question is obvious to the point of redundancy. On the other hand however, there is the idea that the speed of percieved time equates to the enjoyment during that time, this definitely seems valid. If time does indeed fly when we have fun, which I can validate, then it would make sense for some classical conditioning to happen here.
ReplyDeleteOne idea consisted of the brain condensing time. I believe it is true. If I am tired I will fall asleep for hours and when I wake up I feel like I only slept about five or ten minutes.
ReplyDeleteAnother Idea was that the brain has control over its perception and that unsolved resolutions feel like they were just made yesterday because they weren't actedd on. If a a person actually engages in something the brain is filled with memories and they make note of where the time has gone. If your having fun or engaged in a activity time seems to fly by but you know what time was spent on. If the day is boring it seems to drag on and you never know what the time was spent on.
Our perception of time I believe changes with age. The past seems closer the older we grow. It is all some people may seem to remember. As a young bull our past comes to us as fuzzy but as we grow we remember and reminisce on good times. People say that time flies when having fun and that time goes slow when working on something that does not interest us. Also I feel that remembering something is a lot easier when it is a topic that we can keep our mind focused on than when it is something we have a hard time concentrating on…
ReplyDeleteI agree with the idea that "Time does seem to slow to a trickle during an empty afternoon and race when the brain is engrossed in challenging work." I can personally relate to this because I feel the same exact way. Its sort of unfortunate how time passes by so fast when I'm having a good time and it drags when I'm not doing anything. I also agree with the idea that "if very few events come to mind, then the perception of time does not persist." Sometimes when I want to think of something that occured a year ago (something vivid, that I can remember well), it "seems like it was only yesterday". I think its safe to say that my brain works very complex-like. The same with events that happened but I don't remember ANY of it. It almost seems as though it never happened
ReplyDeleteOne topic in the article was that scientists are not sure how our brain tracks time. This is interesting because, when you think about it, time is really all we have. Time is what is here, now, in the past, and in the future, and the passage of time is all relative. So it is interesting what is considered a long time, a short time, and how we keep track of time.
ReplyDeleteAnother idea is that the brain can condense time. When a man isolated himself for two months, he emerged believing only 25 days had past. I believe this is due to his brain creating its own time clock, without society's input into what is a second, minute, hour, and day. In a way, he was correct in his time estimate, because he was working on his own clock.
One idea that the article presented was the fact that if presented with a challenge or stimulating event, the brain will perceive the time to go by at a much faster pace. For example, when working on an online assignment in math class I get so involved in the work and solving problems that I do not pay attention the passing of time and before I know it its time to move onto 4th period. The article also presented the exact opposite idea, that when the brain is not actively engaged time seems to go by slower, creating the feeling of being bored. When sitting at home sometimes and I have no work to complete and the chores are done, there never seems to be anything worthwhile on television. 5 minutes of boredom seems to drag on and feel more like 20 minutes.
ReplyDelete