Scientists Find A Precision Clock Logging the Milliseconds Inside Your Brain

Tuesday, October 20, 2009 - 15:07 in Psychology & Sociology

Though we do it without thinking, keeping track of time is integral to the brain's function, keeping our senses and our actions ordered in a chronology that we then recall in the form of memory. But important as it is, researchers have never understood the mechanism by which humans index the happenings of everyday life. Now, two macaque monkeys may have helped MIT researchers solve the time tracking puzzle. Neuroscientists have theorized for decades that the human brain time stamps events as they happen, just as a camera tags the date and time onto a digital photo file. These stamps keep our memories organized so when called upon, our brains can reach back and pull the correct time-stamped file. While it seems like we do this without thinking, it's actually quite a feat, especially considering that no evidence for these time stamps exists beyond the theoretical. But...

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