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'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

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Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#81
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone asks me the time I'll often respond without looking "about 2.30". Then after digging out my phone check and see it's actually "2.35".

Your perception of time is off, you are perceiving time to be passing slower than it actually is. Right now it only seems like 5 minutes, but over time these error minutes will accumulate and you will feel like you have lived less life than you actually have lived in real time. If you did not know how old you were, one day you might be asked to guess, and think you are 63, but then be told the truth and come to the c…

Why is this down voted? It's obviously a joke (and reasonably funny too)...

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting. I thought I had read that older people perceive time more slowly than younger people but I wonder if that can be overcome by keeping our sense of time-telling "calibrated" by periodically checking our accuracy.

I thought it was the other way around? As you get older your perceive time as moving more quickly? As you get older every hour is a smaller percentage of your total life, so that made sense to me?

My experiences with this suggest that “long” spans of time (weeks->years) follow the “smaller percentage of your life” principle. However, occasions “in the moment” get perceived according to the rules applicable for that moment:

- boring things: usually a slow dirge or filled with brief distractions

- novel things: either no sense of time passing, or a feeling of time going anywhere from slowly to “endless”

- mundane things: time passes “at a familiar rate”, but I remember fee details later

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#83
I thought we had discovered pacemaker cells over 20 years ago. I'd be very surprised if that didn't already factor into hypotheses of how episodic memory is ordered. Either this article is disingenuous, or neuroscience suffers from deep fragmentation that is hindering progress.

https://www.hhmi.org/news/researchers-discover-molecular-pac...

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting. I thought I had read that older people perceive time more slowly than younger people but I wonder if that can be overcome by keeping our sense of time-telling "calibrated" by periodically checking our accuracy.

I thought it was the other way around? As you get older your perceive time as moving more quickly? As you get older every hour is a smaller percentage of your total life, so that made sense to me?

You're absolutely right. Total brain fart and it's too late for me to correct it with an edit.

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't really relate to the article's description of episodic memory. I'm also aphantastic. I wonder if there is a correlation or if it's just coincidence. These things are surprisingly little studied, for example aphantasia has only really seen scientific interest in the last ten years. We all seem to assume that everyone's experience is the same as ours, only slowly discovering how untrue that really is. Even some…

Not long after finding out about Aphantasia I found out about Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory (SDAM) which I felt described my experience of life very well. SDAM isn't a recognised 'condition' as such, but it has a subreddit with some active users to compare your experiences with which you may find useful. https://old.reddit.com/r/SDAM/

Wow, looks like I have to add SDAM to the list of ways I'm different, on top of Aphantasia, not having episodic memory and not being able to vividly recall sounds or smells. At least I don't seem to have Prosopagnosia (A serious downgrade of your facial recognition).

That list is pretty long, I'm not sure how to feel about that. (Probably because I generally seem to have less extreme emotional reactions)

A study from May 2020 [1] seems to show a strong correlation between these symptoms, suggesting that the underlying cause may be the same.

1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7308278/

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#86
post #46

When I was young, I received a serious blow to my head while playing soccer that broke my skull and caused all sorts of issues at the time. I've managed a full recovery, but in the days following the accident, I lost my intuition of time. It's difficult to explain: I knew, logically, that I had lunch before I had dinner - and I had memory of doing both - but I couldn't "feel" that lunch was before dinner. It's pretty…

I kind of know what you mean. In my case, it was due a psychedelic substance. I vividly remember being inside, walking out in the street and opening the door to go out, in that order. Made me feel very confused because I knew that logically it could not have gone that way, yet that was the chronology in my mind.

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#87

I thought we had discovered pacemaker cells over 20 years ago. I'd be very surprised if that didn't already factor into hypotheses of how episodic memory is ordered. Either this article is disingenuous, or neuroscience suffers from deep fragmentation that is hindering progress. https://www.hhmi.org/news/researchers-discover-molecular-pac...

Did you actually read both studies? If so, I don't see how you could have arrived at the conclusion that the time cell paper is a rehash of what you linked. They are talking about and focusing on entirely different things.

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#88

I thought we had discovered pacemaker cells over 20 years ago. I'd be very surprised if that didn't already factor into hypotheses of how episodic memory is ordered. Either this article is disingenuous, or neuroscience suffers from deep fragmentation that is hindering progress. https://www.hhmi.org/news/researchers-discover-molecular-pac...

Related: breathing is semi-autonomous, and controlled in the brain:

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2017/08/408006/searching-brain-cel...

We can be aware of our breathing or not, yawn, and hold our breath. I imagine we can do similar with our sense of time: count seconds, have a sense of time, and lose our sense of time (on purpose or by accident).

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#89
This isn't unique to humans or even animals

https://youtu.be/CA-YsWXRSHU?t=448

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabidopsis_thaliana#Light_sen...

It records ~40 days of temperature in a certain range, and remembers it till it senses the light of spring. If it's put into a dark room after 40 days, it waits till it senses light to flower, so it must be remembering those memories of cold temperatures.

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#90

I thought we had discovered pacemaker cells over 20 years ago. I'd be very surprised if that didn't already factor into hypotheses of how episodic memory is ordered. Either this article is disingenuous, or neuroscience suffers from deep fragmentation that is hindering progress. https://www.hhmi.org/news/researchers-discover-molecular-pac...

The prior probability of you being wrong about facts in another field is fairly high.

The prior probability of the researcher being wrong about facts in their own field is much lower.

Therefore the default assumption one should have when reviewing research from a field that is NOT their own is closer to "I am the idiot" than "The researchers are the idiots".

in my humble opinion.

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