Our (Brain’s) Fascination with Time

Let me begin with a little fact of the day: everyone nowadays study psychology at one point or another in college. It’s interesting – the idea of reading minds, or brain and its behaviors to be exact, fascinate people. Going a bit more specific, the latest trend in Hollywood has utilized this excitement that people have in brains with another thing: time.

Don’t worry, I’m not planning to go onto talk about H.G. Wells here. No, let’s look more recently. Inception and Shutter Island both discussed the matter of time (reality of it, speed of it, etc..), and brought Leonardo DiCaprio to the screen on the same year. And now, Joseph Gordon-Levitt – who also appeared in Inception – joined Bruce Willis in Looper. If you haven’t seen this movie, you should – it’s pretty great movie about the “loop” (I’ll stop here for spoilers).

Now, I’m not here to discuss or ramble about Hollywood. Instead, I want to point out a fancy trend here. As technology continues to improve more and more, we can’t help but realize that there are still things we want to do, but can’t. For instance, look at efficiency. There are numerous smartphone apps that cry out “efficiency” or “second brain” (Evernote comes to my mind on this one), but none can give you “more” time. Or let you go back in time to use the time you “wasted” better.

Sleep is another factor. When you sleep, how does the time travel? Why does it feel that when you wake up after busy work, the morning seems to come “faster”? What about sleep within sleep? Or dream within dream (this idea was probably familiar to you even before Inception though)?

You may already know that “whole 10 percent of the brain” talk is not true. Why? Because in order for our brain to work – that is, to process sleep correctly, grasp reality from dream, understand the pacing rate of time, and so on – you need 100% of brain to function. It has been clearly shown through clinical studies that you cause even one problem in connections through neurons in the brain, that will result in various degree of impairment in the functioning of the brain.

But, how does this work with time? I don’t mean circadian rhythms that indicate when you should eat lunch. The fact that we are aware of time change in the day, in the season, and in the overall span of lifetime is fascinating. It is also the source of many movies, books, and stories that take this idea and try to come up with “reasonable” explanations.

Perhaps, it’s not so important on how or why it works, but just the fact that it does. This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry involved G-protein – also related to brain – so it will be exciting in the future as we know more about this fascinating part of us called brain.