The mysteries of time and the brain

Why does time slow down when we fear for our lives? Does the brain shift gears for a few suspended seconds and perceive the world at half speed, or is some other mechanism at work? Time is subjective, it comes down to perception, and it's intrinsically linked to memory. Read how the surreal trippy feeling of falling off a roof as a boy sparked a quest to study "the coolest thing in the world" in this amazing article by Burkhard Bilger in The New Yorker: What a brush with death taught David Eagleman about the mysteries of time and the brain.

When David Eagleman was eight years old, he fell off a roof and kept on falling. Or so it seemed at the time. His family was living outside Albuquerque, in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains. There were only a few other houses around, scattered among the bunchgrass and the cholla cactus, and a new construction site was the Eagleman boys’ idea of a perfect playground. David and his older brother, Joel, had ridden their dirt bikes to a half-finished adobe house about a quarter of a mile away. When they’d explored the rooms below, David scrambled up a wooden ladder to the roof. He stood there for a few minutes taking in the view—west across desert and subdivision to the city rising in the distance—then walked over the newly laid tar paper to a ledge above the living room. “It looked stiff,” he told me recently. “So I stepped onto the edge of it.”

In the years since, Eagleman has collected hundreds of stories like his, and they almost all share the same quality: in life-threatening situations, time seems to slow down. He remembers the feeling clearly, he says. His body stumbles forward as the tar paper tears free at his feet. His hands stretch toward the ledge, but it’s out of reach. The brick floor floats upward—some shiny nails are scattered across it—as his body rotates weightlessly above the ground. It’s a moment of absolute calm and eerie mental acuity. But the thing he remembers best is the thought that struck him in midair: this must be how Alice felt when she was tumbling down the rabbit hole.

Eagleman is thirty-nine now and an assistant professor of neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine, in Houston. Physically, he seems no worse for the fall. He did a belly flop on the bricks, he says, and his nose took most of the impact. “He made a one-point landing,” as his father puts it. The cartilage was so badly smashed that an emergency-room surgeon had to remove it all, leaving Eagleman with a rubbery proboscis that he could bend in any direction. But it stiffened up eventually, and it’s hard to tell that it was ever injured. Eagleman has puckish, neatly carved features, with a lantern jaw and modish sideburns. In Baylor’s lab-coated corridors, he wears designer jeans and square-toed ankle boots, and walks with a bounce in his step that’s suspiciously close to a strut, like Pinocchio heading off to Pleasure Island.

If Eagleman’s body bears no marks of his childhood accident, his mind has been deeply imprinted by it. He is a man obsessed by time. As the head of a lab at Baylor, Eagleman has spent the past decade tracing the neural and psychological circuitry of the brain’s biological clocks. He has had the good fortune to arrive in his field at the same time as fMRI scanners, which allow neuroscientists to observe the brain at work, in the act of thinking. But his best results have often come through more inventive means: video games, optical illusions, physical challenges. Eagleman has a talent for testing the untestable, for taking seemingly sophomoric notions and using them to nail down the slippery stuff of consciousness. “There are an infinite number of boring things to do in science,” he told me. “But we live these short life spans. Why not do the thing that’s the coolest thing in the world to do?”

The Eagleman lab, on the ground floor of Baylor’s Ben Taub General Hospital, could be the lair of a precocious but highly distractible teen-ager. The doors are pinned with cartoons, the counters strewn with joysticks and other gizmos. The conference table is flanked by a large red rubber ball, for use as a chair or a Hippity Hop. When Eagleman first moved in, he had the walls painted baby blue, with a shiny finish designed to be erasable. By now, they’ve been covered from floor to ceiling with equations, graphs, time lines, to-do lists, aphorisms, and sketches of brain waves—a Pollocky palimpsest of red, green, purple, and black scribblings. “The old stuff is really hard to erase,” Eagleman told me. “It’s like memory that way.”

Although Eagleman and his students study timing in the brain, their own sense of time tends to be somewhat unreliable. Eagleman wears a Russian wristwatch to work every morning, though it’s been broken for months. “The other day, I was in the lab,” he told me, “and I said to Daisy, who sits in the corner, ‘Hey, what time is it?’ And she said, ‘I don’t know. My watch is broken.’ It turns out that we’re all wearing broken watches.” Scientists are often drawn to things that bedevil them, he said. “I know one lab that studies nicotine receptors and all the scientists are smokers, and another lab that studies impulse control and they’re all overweight.” But Eagleman’s ambivalence goes deeper. Clocks offer at best a convenient fiction, he says. They imply that time ticks steadily, predictably forward, when our experience shows that it often does the opposite: it stretches and compresses, skips a beat and doubles back.

The brain is a remarkably capable chronometer for most purposes. It can track seconds, minutes, days, and weeks, set off alarms in the morning, at bedtime, on birthdays and anniversaries. Timing is so essential to our survival that it may be the most finely tuned of our senses. In lab tests, people can distinguish between sounds as little as five milliseconds apart, and our involuntary timing is even quicker. If you’re hiking through a jungle and a tiger growls in the underbrush, your brain will instantly home in on the sound by comparing when it reached each of your ears, and triangulating between the three points. The difference can be as little as nine-millionths of a second.

Yet “brain time,” as Eagleman calls it, is intrinsically subjective. “Try this exercise,” he suggests in a recent essay. “Put this book down and go look in a mirror. Now move your eyes back and forth, so that you’re looking at your left eye, then at your right eye, then at your left eye again. When your eyes shift from one position to the other, they take time to move and land on the other location. But here’s the kicker: you never see your eyes move.” There’s no evidence of any gaps in your perception—no darkened stretches like bits of blank film—yet much of what you see has been edited out. Your brain has taken a complicated scene of eyes darting back and forth and recut it as a simple one: your eyes stare straight ahead. Where did the missing moments go?

The question raises a fundamental issue of consciousness: how much of what we perceive exists outside of us and how much is a product of our minds? Time is a dimension like any other, fixed and defined down to its tiniest increments: millennia to microseconds, aeons to quartz oscillations. Yet the data rarely matches our reality. The rapid eye movements in the mirror, known as saccades, aren’t the only things that get edited out. The jittery camera shake of everyday vision is similarly smoothed over, and our memories are often radically revised. What else are we missing? When Eagleman was a boy, his favorite joke had a turtle walking into a sheriff’s office. “I’ve just been attacked by three snails!” he shouts. “Tell me what happened,” the sheriff replies. The turtle shakes his head: “I don’t know, it all happened so fast.”

A few years ago, Eagleman thought back on his fall from the roof and decided that it posed an interesting research question. Why does time slow down when we fear for our lives? Does the brain shift gears for a few suspended seconds and perceive the world at half speed, or is some other mechanism at work? The only way to know for sure was to re-create the situation in a controlled setting. Eagleman and one of his graduate students, Chess Stetson, who is now at Caltech, began by designing and programming a “perceptual chronometer.” About the size of a pack of cards, it had an L.E.D. display connected to a circuit board and powered by a nine-volt battery. The unit could be strapped to a subject’s wrist, where it would flash a number at a rate just beyond the threshold of perception. If time slowed down, Eagleman reasoned, the number would become visible. Now he just needed a good, life-threatening situation.... Read the rest of this article here (it's worth it).

UncategorizedJack DysonComment
Speed climbing the Eiger

The first ascent of the north face of Eiger, a mountain in the Swiss Alps (13,025 feet tall), happened in 1938 and took three days. Watch as Ueli Steck climbs it in 2 hours, 47 minutes, and 33 seconds. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-dPjDYVKUY&feature=player_embedded]

UncategorizedJack DysonComment
The Milky Way - breathtaking timelapse

Too good to miss. Click through and watch it as large as you can if it's not big enough here. Really truly spectacular. [vimeo http://vimeo.com/22439234]

This is called The Mountain, by Norwegian filmmaker Terje Sorgjer. He says: "This was filmed between 4th and 11th April 2011. I had the pleasure of visiting El Teide. Spain's highest mountain (3718m) is one of the best places in the world to photograph the stars and is also the location of Teide Observatories, considered to be one of the world´s best observatories.

The goal was to capture the beautiful Milky Way galaxy along with one of the most amazing mountains I know El Teide. I have to say this was one of the most exhausting trips I have done. There was a lot of hiking at high altitudes and probably less than 10 hours of sleep in total for the whole week. Having been here 10-11 times before I had a long list of must-see locations I wanted to capture for this movie, but I am still not 100% used to carrying around so much gear required for time-lapse movies.

A large sandstorm hit the Sahara Desert on the 9th April (bit.ly/​g3tsDW) and at approx 3am in the night the sandstorm hit me, making it nearly impossible to see the sky with my own eyes.

Interestingly enough my camera was set for a five hour sequence of the milky way during this time and I was sure my whole scene was ruined. To my surprise, my camera had managed to capture the sandstorm which was backlit by Grand Canary Island making it look like golden clouds. The Milky Way was shining through the clouds, making the stars sparkle in an interesting way. So if you ever wondered how the Milky Way would look through a Sahara sandstorm, look at 00:32."

Do look at some of his others too (link).

UncategorizedJack DysonComment
The human spirograph

Amazing post here from BOOOOOOOOOM showing human spirograph Tony Orrico, an artist who performs for up to four hours at a time without pause. Couple of vids at the bottom. Utterly, utterly bonkers of course, but kind of amazing. In the last video, he has a bandana. I reckon Jeff Bridges would play him in the inevitable movie biopic.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO5cFCxSog4&feature=player_embedded]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWqH1oIWJJY&feature=player_embedded]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BG9ILVQBkQ&feature=player_embedded]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD6i9l2GNiE&feature=player_embedded]

UncategorizedJack Dysonart, dance, human spirograph, peopleComment
Impossible Art

Jason Lazarus is starting to curate a blog of impossible art ideas. Some of them are genius, others a bit hit and miss. He could probably do with a few more. Check out the full site here but make sure you add one of your own.

[slideshow]

UncategorizedJack DysonComment
Hifana – Rainy Session

Breakbeat duo Hifana (a.k.a. KEIZOmachine! and Juicy) hippy out in a rainy-day session with Keisuke Muto (sitar), U-zhaan (tabla) and Izpon (percussion). Some amazing little drums and noise-making toys. Really nice to have on in the background. I want one of those eggcup things.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qsGqHbTC_g&w=700]

I think, on balance, they could at least have made an effort to get more stoned first.

(via)

UncategorizedJack Dysonmusic, session, sitar, tabla, tranquilComment
The Guy Quote - Dr Seuss

"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life's realities."

Theodor Seuss Geisel was an American writer and cartoonist most widely known for his children's books written under the pen names Dr. Seuss, Theo LeSieg and, in one case, Rosetta Stone. He published 44 children's books, often characterised by imaginative characters, rhyme, and frequent use of trisyllabic meter (you know the ones. Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, Horton Hatches the Egg, Horton Hears a Who!, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and so on). These were adapted in loads of different things - eleven television specials, three feature films, a Broadway musical and four television series.

He started using "Seuss" as a tag when he was caught drinking gin with some friends in his room (this was in the days of prohibition) and banned from extracurricular activities. The only way he could carry on writing for the college humour magazine - the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern - was under a pseudonym. So, without further ado...

You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.

Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.

Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one.

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. You are the guy who'll decide where to go.

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.

Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.

I'm sorry to say so but, sadly it's true that bang-ups and hang-ups can happen to you.

I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I've bought a big bat. I'm all ready you see. Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

If you never did you should. These things are fun and fun is good.

All alone! Whether you like it or not, alone is something you'll be quite a lot.

I'm afraid sometimes you'll play lonely games too, games you can't win because you'll play against you.

I'm sorry to say so but, sadly it's true that bang-ups and hang-ups can happen to you

ps - this is from Wikipedia on the poetic meters he used:

Geisel wrote most of his books in anapestic tetrameter, a poetic meter employed by many poets of the English literary canon. This characteristic style of writing, which draws and pulls the reader into the text, is often suggested as one of the reasons that Geisel's writing was so well-received.[32][33]

Anapestic tetrameter consists of four rhythmic units, anapests, each composed of two weak beats followed by one strong beat; often, the first weak syllable is omitted, or an additional weak syllable is added at the end. An example of this meter can be found in Geisel's "Yertle the Turtle", from Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories:

"And today the Great Yertle, that Marvelous he
Is King of the Mud. That is all he can see."[34]

Geisel generally maintained this rhythm quite strictly, but in his later career somewhat relaxed this tendency. The consistency of his meter was one of his hallmarks; the many imitators and parodists of Geisel are often unable to write in strict anapestic tetrameter, or are unaware that they should, and thus sound clumsy in comparison.

Some books by Geisel that are written mainly in anapestic tetrameter also contain many lines written in amphibrachic tetrameter, such as these from If I Ran the Circus:

"All ready to put up the tents for my circus.
I think I will call it the Circus McGurkus.
"And NOW comes an act of Enormous Enormance!
No former performers performed this performance!"

Geisel also wrote verse in trochaic tetrameter, an arrangement of a strong beat followed by a weak beat, with four units per line (for example, the title of One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish). The formula for trochaic meter permits the final weak position in the line to be omitted, which facilitates the construction of rhymes.

Geisel generally maintained trochaic meter only for brief passages, and for longer stretches typically mixed it with iambic tetrameter, which consists of a weak beat followed by a strong, and is generally considered easier to write. Thus, for example, the magicians in Bartholomew and the Oobleck make their first appearance chanting in trochees (thus resembling the witches of Shakespeare's Macbeth):

"Shuffle, duffle, muzzle, muff"

then switch to iambs for the oobleck spell:

"Go make the Oobleck tumble down
On every street, in every town!"

+

[[ps - please check out some of my other quote collections here - The Guy Quote]]

UncategorizedJack Dysondr seuss, fantasy, nonsense, nonsense poetry, poetry, rhyme, the guy quote, writingComment
Behind the Seams - Mexican Pointy Boots (camp cowboy ravers)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEiMA3QtYWc&w=700] One of the weirdest things I think I've ever seen. Camp Mexican raver cowboys in pointy boot and shuffling around to music competitions. The club scene at the end is just plain weird, but there's a bit when they're standing in a row outside that is one of the most utterly surreal things ever, especially with the weird bloopy music soundtrack.

“In this episode of Behind the Seams we head to the dusty city of Matehuala, Mexico in search of the pointiest long-toed cowboy boots ever made. Over the past year, the botas vaqueras exóticas phenomenon has overrun the rodeo dance floors and clubs of this area and even spreading North into Texas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and any place where big groups of immigrant Mexicans have taken root. We made our way to Desierto Light, one of the clubs in this area where party promoters host dance-offs to music known as Tribal Guarachero. For the finals competition, the 17-year-old prodigy DJ Erick Rincón of the 3ballMTY crew performed for a crowd of adoring pointy-boot wearing raver cowboys.”

UncategorizedJack DysonComment