Page 12 - It' about time: Studying the Encoding of Duration

Time is of the essence The passage of time is a fundamental aspect of the human experience. We all 1 experience ourselves as moving through time, going from one moment to the next, making our way into the future. As part of this process we experience time at many different scales. We live for many years and spend a lot of our time planning the coming months, weeks, days, hours, and minutes of our lives. At the same time, we have learned to understand the passage of time at timescales that are beyond the limits of our experience. For example, we have estimated that our sun will die and turn into a black hole in approximately 10 billion years. On the opposite end of this spectrum, we understand (sub) molecular processes that occur at an infinitely small timescale such as nuclear fission lasting only 10-14 seconds. However, it is our perception of time at the most immediate timescale available to us, the passing of (milli)seconds, that governs our existence. Our experience of time at the (sub-)second timescale is crucial for our interaction with the world around us. It allows us to analyze whether events occur at the same time (simultaneity) or at separate moments; to judge the temporal order of events; and to perceive temporal properties such as the duration of events and the rate at which things change over time. We can then use this temporal information to learn about the temporal regularities in our environment and apply this knowledge to predict future events, plan our actions, and guide our decisions. Furthermore, our perception of temporal information allows us to track our behavior and synchronize our actions with our environment. Consider a simple action such as catching a ball. When a ball is thrown at us, it moves closer over time. Since we perceive separated moments in time and can judge their temporal relation, we can infer that the ball is moving towards us. If necessary, we can then use our knowledge of temporal patterns to estimate the speed at which the ball is moving and the time we have left until the ball reaches us. This allows us to synchronize our movements with the external event and try and catch the ball. This example provides a fitting description of the multiple facets of our temporal perception that we use to successfully interact with the world around us. General introduction 11