Your Brain Is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time

by Dean Buonomano

Overview

A leading neuroscientist embarks on a groundbreaking exploration of how time works inside the brain.

In Your Brain Is a Time Machine, brain researcher and best-selling author Dean Buonomano draws on evolutionary biology, physics, and philosophy to present his influential theory of how we tell, and perceive, time. The human brain, he argues, is a complex system that not only tells time but creates it; it constructs our sense of chronological flow and enables “mental time travel”—simulations of future and past events. These functions are essential not only to our daily lives but to the evolution of the human race: without the ability to anticipate the future, mankind would never have crafted tools or invented agriculture. The brain was designed to navigate our continuously changing world by predicting what will happen and when.

Buonomano combines neuroscience expertise with a far-ranging, multidisciplinary approach. With engaging style, he illuminates such concepts as consciousness, spacetime, and relativity while addressing profound questions that have long occupied scientists and philosophers alike: What is time? Is our sense of time’s passage an illusion? Does free will exist, or is the future predetermined? In pursuing the answers, Buonomano reveals as much about the fascinating architecture of the human brain as he does about the intricacies of time itself. This virtuosic work of popular science leads to an astonishing realization: your brain is, at its core, a time machine.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393247947
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/04/2017
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Dean Buonomano is a professor of neurobiology and psychology at UCLA and a leading theorist on the neuroscience of time. His previous book, Brain Bugs: How the Brain’s Flaws Shape Our Lives, was a Wall Street Journal bestseller.

Table of Contents

Part I Brain Time

1:00 Flavors of Time 3

2:00 The Best Time Machine You'll Ever Own 17

3:00 Day and Night 34

4:00 The Sixth Sense 57

5:00 Patterns in Time 79

6:00 Time, Neural Dynamics, and Chaos 101

Part II The Physical and Mental Nature of Time

7:00 Keeping Time 127

8:00 Time: What the Hell Is It? 144

9.00 The Spatialization of Time in Physics 157

10:00 The Spatialization of Time in Neuroscience 179

11:00 Mental Time Travel 195

12:00 Consciousness: Binding the Past and the Future 215

Acknowledgments 235

Notes 237

Bibliography 255

Index 279

Editorial Reviews

02/20/2017
Buonomano (Brain Bugs), a neuroscientist and professor at UCLA, explores how our brains shape our perception of time, as well as how time itself has shaped our brains. Evolved for optimizing our survival, our brains mark the passage of time and remember the past, using that knowledge to predict the future. For example, Buonomano notes that upon hearing a list, a person will assume that the items in it have occurred in the same order in which they were listed. How our brains process language is dependent on how they process patterns in time. A person’s internal, circadian clock is fueled by biology through a neurological “feedback loop” that is stabilized by chaotically shifting signals in the brain. For a neurologist, this is all pretty common knowledge. Things get really intriguing for readers when Buonomano looks at how our sense of time fits into our comprehension of spacetime, Einsteinian relativity, and the nature of the physical universe. Buonomano covers a lot of territory, but each section is vividly written and accessible, and he treats the most complex topics with refreshing clarity. Readers looking for a thoughtful and provocative exploration of time will find this a worthwhile resource. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"Dean Buonomano’s book is a revelation that proposes a radically new view of the brain in which the paramount function of neuronal circuits is to generate processes whose actions define time. Neuroscience needs a revolution before we can comprehend how a brain gives rise to a mind. Buonomano’s proposal to understand the brain as a coupled set of processes playing out in time, to define time, may come to be seen as the start of that revolution."

Lee Smolin

"This book awakened me to the possibility that the nature of time may very well come from a marriage between neuroscience and fundamental physics. Buonomano’s writing is so clear and captivating that I felt like we were having a conversation at my favorite café—I simply couldn’t put it down."

Stephon Alexander

"Buonomano has brought the study of time to center stage, shining a spotlight on how the brain constructs a sense without sensors. Drawing on insights from fields as diverse as neuroscience, theoretical physics, linguistics, and even public policy, Your Brain Is a Time Machine reveals how the enigmatic fourth dimension is essential to our existence and, indeed, fundamental to what makes us human. Through his engaging and lively writing, Buonomano invites the reader to join him on an extraordinary travel into the science of time. A trip not to be missed."

Richard Ivry

"Dean Buonomano has a light touch and a sure hand in addressing complex scientific issues. Your Brain Is a Time Machine is filled with vivid examples of how time weaves its web in the physical world and in our brains. A pleasure for anyone interested in the deepest questions about how the brain and the universe work."

Chris Impey

"Forget Doc Brown’s DeLorean. Buonomano has discovered a more exciting—and real—time machine inside of every human head... Armchair scientists must make time for this excursion!"

Booklist - Bryce Christensen

"Immensely engaging."

Nature - Barbara Kiser

"[Buonomano] lays out the latest, best theories about how we understand time, illuminating a fundamental aspect of being human."

New York Magazine - Thomas MacMillan

"Beautifully written, eloquently reasoned…. With lucidity and flair—not to mention an appealing avoidance of the reductionism and exaggeration to which many pop-neuroscientists are prone—Mr. Buonomano takes us off and running on an edifying scientific journey."

Wall Street Journal - Carol Tavris

"It's about time. A fascinating, engaging, and informative book about one of the deepest mysteries in science. What else can you ask for?"

Joseph LeDoux

"Buonomano does for the neuroscience of time what Hawking did for the physics of time. The science of temporal perception is in the middle of a renaissance. Highly overdue, this is the best popular treatment of the latest research on your mind’s clocks."

Craig Callender

"Buonomano lays out a wealth of complex concepts in an entertaining, digestible way…. [This] book will make you question your own perceptions and marvel at the fact that your brain is probably ‘the best time machine you will ever own.’"

Scientific American - Diana Kwon

"Why does time seem to flow from moment to moment? It’s a mystery because physics tells a different story: time simply is, a passive label on different parts of the universe. Dean Buonomano cooks a rich stew of ideas, from philosophy to neuroscience, to help understand this question, and thereby paints a clearer picture of our place in the physical world."

Sean Carroll

2017-02-20
What is the most important function of the human brain? Well, one takeaway from this lively book on that beloved organ is that it enables us "to predict and prepare for the future."Futurity, predestination, affordances: heady matters, indeed. But, at a more genial level of questioning, why does time fly when we're having fun? It moves, after all, at the same relentless pace as it does when we're experiencing misery. The answer lies in perception: when we're in the midst of something grueling, unpleasant, or dull, we think obsessively about how long it's taking. On the other hand, writes UCLA neuroscientist Buonomano (Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives, 2011), "as they unfold, interesting and engaging activities seem to fly by, in part because we are not thinking about time." Whether not thinking about time will make that airport delay any more tolerable may depend on other variables, but the point remains: for humans, governed by internal clocks rather than the ultraprecise atomic time scale that machines and economies depend on, time's passage is all about how we perceive it to be moving. Buonomano examines, for instance, the "slow-motion effect" in which time seems to slow to a crawl, as when, in his case, he suffered a bad car crash. He considers such events by means of competing hypotheses, one of which bears the suggestive name "metaillusion," and none of which undermines the larger point about perception. The author observes that almost every region of the brain is implicated to some extent in our ability to keep time, such that "most neural circuits are intrinsically able to keep time if needed." Writing in eminently accessible prose that is nonetheless backed by some fiercely hard-edged science, Buonomano also looks at a few thorny philosophical and epistemological problems through the lens of time, considering, for instance, whether free will is not really a matter of timing in decision-making. Fascinating throughout and a pleasing vehicle by which to think about thinking—and the passing hours.

Kirkus Reviews

"Buonomano’s ambition is inspiring and his writing is rich.… [Your Brain Is a Time Machine] hits the ambitious target of being both thorough and accessible."

Chemistry World - Georgina Edwards

"The beauty of this book is Buonomano’s seamless leap from the fields of biology and psychology into the world of physics. Never appearing out of his depth, he grapples with the subject’s most infuriating question: what is time?"

Lancet Neurology - Jonathan Blott

"Full of delicious details.… Reading Buonomano’s book, it’s hard not to marvel at how time and timekeeping pervade our existence."

New Scientist - Anil Ananthaswamy