Geoffrey Ghose and Blaine Schneider of the University of Minnesota recorded brain activity across 100 neurons in the lateral intraparietal cortex of two rhesus macques monkeys. The lateral intraparietal cortex is the area of the brain most often involved in eye movement. They did this to examine how brain biology and visual stimuli correspond to our understanding of time. What they found was that a specific set of neurons is responsible for our linear understanding of time. They discovered that brain circuits may have their own ability to keep time, and that our perception of it can be altered during high emotional stress.

Emotional stress is responsible for changes in the amount of neuromodulators like adrenalin present in the brain. Other neuormodulators, such as dopamine, seratonin, and histamine did not have the same effect. Unlike all of these neuromodulators, adrenalin affects the rate of decay of neuronal activity, making it especially partial to influencing our perception of time. Ghose spoke to New Scientist saying, “In our model, a change in the activity decay rate is all you need to have a different sense of ‘what time’ it is. It might be possible to tweak an individual’s sense of timing by altering these signals.”

Final results of the study suggest that scientists could one day be able to control how we experience time by affecting the neural connections which indicate its passage in our brains. Perhaps the City should look to this discovery as a solution to help make commuting in Toronto more bearable.

[Via New Scientist]

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Claudia McNeilly writes for the Toronto Standard. You can follow her on twitter at @claudiamcneilly

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