Your brain is a time machine

👋 Hey Friends,

this week I have started to read the book "Your Brain Is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time" by the famous neuroscientist and bestselling author Dean Buonomano.

The book has an interesting premise of suggesting that our brain is the organ that creates the sense and flow of time. Without it, our perception of what we call time would be way different. It may seem obvious that this sensation is a general rule for mammals since the perception in both time and space is a fundamental aspect that is necessary to both hunt prey and hide from predators. The ability to roughly know what the future brings to us is very valuable in an evolutionary sense but one particular thing that resonates and differs us as humans from other mammals is that we can project ourselves into any scenario in time.

That the brain therefore is a time machine is argued by the author with a set of three specific arguments which show that our brain isn't just a time machine but it is necessary for us that it is: