This is actually a tough question because we really don't know how. However, although we think that there exist neural pathways governing time perception, time does not appear to be associated with specific sensory pathways, but rather uses a highly distributed system in the brain. Time perception therefore differs from our other senses – sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch, pain, temperature, kinesthetic, even proprioception – since time cannot be directly perceived, it must be “reconstructed” in some way by the brain.

Neurotransmitters such as (e.g. dopamine and norepinephrine) are involved in our perception of time, but the exact mechanism is still not well understood. The human brain appears to possess some kind of “internal clock” (distinct from the biological or circadian clock which through studies of individuals in isolation yielded a perceived day as being approximately 25+ hours) which is linked to specific dopamine levels, or possibly even several different clocks working together but independently, each of which may dictate our time perception depending on the particular context.

When the brain receives new information from the outside world, the brain reorganizes the information and presents it in a more easily understandable form. In the case of familiar information, very little time is needed for this process, but new information requires more processing making time feel elongated. This is part of the reason why a child’s summer seems to last forever, while an old person’s well-practiced routine seems to slip away faster and faster. The more familiar the task, the less new information the brain needs to process, and the more quickly time seems to pass.

Scott Matheson Hitchcock

Thank you for sharing this set of interesting questions. I will try to give you a short summary of what I have found so far. The T-computers in our brains [confirming my theory and verified by fMRI scans- see my papers on this website] mark our perceptions with a 'time' stamp in order to create a sense of before and after order in our memory that reflects the observed patterns of cause and effect as well a chains of events forming causal networks that are maps of the changes in the world we observe. How our brain processes this information resulting in the creation of mental maps in our memories is just a starting point. How our consciousness then organizes memories and causal patterns is one of the great challenges of brain science. Perhaps you should look at my other papers. I am attaching an image of how we experience time dilation and contraction effects with respect to a standard clock. The peaks on the represent mental states the variation in the distances between peaks represent dilation and contraction depending on how quickly or slowly the brain shifts from one state of consciousness tro the next. Subjectively we can only experience the states and in turn compare then to a standard clock to say things appear to slow down or speed up or remain 'normal. We think things are continuous even though the information coming into our brain is a series of discrete information packages ... frames of a movie for example. Since we exist at each state our sense of reality seems continuous even though we clearly have a movie like perception of reality. This is evident in that fact that the eye can only send signals to the brain at a relatively slow rate. This is why the frames per second of movies and scan rasters and computer displays refresh faster that the eye thus creating the illusion of movement between frames. So we make a continuous reality from discrete pieces of sensory information. Therefore we are both continuous and discrete at the same 'time' - a measure of change which we create from observations of an evolving universe using our brains T-computer as a tool for our survival! You can look at my other papers for more on this. I hope this helps. Cheers, Scott

Thanks professor Gerry Leisman for your attention.

you re right this is not an easy question, in particular when we focus on perception of time as a behavior of human as you say : the reconstructed time, we face with whole of our body and the world out of us not just with an activity of brain, in brief I think regarded to some different between awareness and consciousness we must distinct estimation of time from perception of time...

What is your opinion about it?

And Thanks @Scott Matheson Hitchcock because of sharing your interesting work T-computers. you and Mr Leisman refer to inner clock in brain. It is common that we had have a clock to manage our wakening 24(25..) hours a day. I m not sure but I read somewhere there is not so any permanent inner clock in our brain but our perception of time is made of a temporal processing in brain system. This activity is made of in a modular processing and in the other hand most areas of brain engage with the estimation or reconstruction of time, also surprisingly our mode and our heartbeat, in general our bodily rhythm affected it...

Human being cannot perceive time. Time is a highly abstract conception, not a physical existence. It is a conceptualization of one property of all physical existence - the property of change of all physical existence, as all physical existence changes (or the so-called seasonality). So human being get the idea of time by logical deduction, not by perception.

Dear Samaneh Allame , you may be interested in the following bolg post:

https://lifeboat.com/blog/2018/05/this-physicists-ideas-of-time-will-blow-your-mind

Thanks Ligen Yu , for your attention and your reply, but you believe that logic of time as such a work done by Mctegart and his contemporaries would have been success to explanation of Time? I think we must discrete two categories at first: the speak about the existence of time from the speak about perception of time. In face of you I think we could not have true judgment about the identity of time but as it is occur in psychology and physio-psychology we can get almost good explanation about which we perceive, and our perception of time. As Kant do this with our ways of epistemology: we can perceive object but we can not express existence of it in a Non-phenomenological concept.

Thanks again @Ligen Yu , for that Link, As I was a physics student, I believe in Quantum mechanics, but seriously believe it can not reply all questions of course.

Dear Samaneh Allame , thank you for your reply to my comments. Time as an SI base unit does not exist and is actually not measurable. To measure a duration of time, even for one second, we have to start from the past and get into the future. But what we only have is the present. Past is our memory and future is our expectation, none of them exist at the present. That's why Einstein can only define time as "the position of the small hand of my watch" not a duration:

https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/origins_pathway/On-the_electrodynamics/index.html

Also time from different clocks are distinctive, and cannot be compared from one to the other. One year is not 12 months, and is not 365 days. One day is not 24 hours.

Time & Tide wait for no more .Time is our basic essence of time .time remain our guiding factor with the joining watch this may help us to guide our life line for future course of action .

This is my personal opinion

Thanks

I will see it.

To answer

“How really human being perceives the Time?”

- it is evidently necessary before to understand – what is “human”?, why and how human “perceives” something [and what is “something”, of course]?, and what is “the Time”?

All these questions fundamentally cannot be answered in framework of mainstream philosophy and sciences, since in the mainstream all really fundamental phenomena/notions, first of all in this case “Matter”, “Consciousness”, “Space”, “Time”, “Energy”, “Information”, are fundamentally completely transcendent/uncertain/irrational,

- while for humans really all these phenomena/notions can be really rigorously scientifically defined only together.

That is possible, and done, only in framework of the Shevchenko-Tokarevsky’s philosophical 2007 “The Information as Absolute” conception, recent version of the basic paper see

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/363645560_The_Information_as_Absolute_-_2022_ed

So more, including answers to the questions above, see this link, here only briefly:

– now humans, more correctly fundamentally non-material humans’ consciousnesses, fundamentally illusory/erroneously perceive “Time”, mostly as that Newton defined

“…Absolute, true and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature flows equably without regard to anything external…”,

- and this definition remains in mainstream physics till now, though with “relativistic” correction – the time flow is “dilated” by moving reference frames and even by moving particles, what is also fundamentally illusory/erroneous the SR postulate.

Some humans, first of all I. Kant and his rather numerous successors, claim that sequences of events in “stationary” time is result of human’s mind operation, what also is fundamentally illusory/erroneous assertion.

Really the absolutely fundamental phenomenon/notion “Time” is actualized in all/every informational pattern/system, including the dynamical systems “Matter” and “human’s consciousness” as the unique general and universal for everything “time dimension”, which is fundamentally “fixed”, and where everything that changes fundamentally obligatorily moves at every change [quite as something moves in well observed as fixed space dimensions],

- what, because of the illusions are fundamentally possible at any consciousness operation, illusory is “perceived”, when, say, a human see how the pointer of a clock rotates.

Again – for those who really wants to understand what are the fundamental phenomena/notions above see the linked paper, SS posts in the threads

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_time11#view=63c940bafa2ccd380d0b4943/4/7/6and

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Do_events_invoke_time_in_space are relevant to this thread question as well.

Cheers

Dear Sergey,

Yes humans see changes but nobody ever saw time which is a purely human construction for us to coordinate our activities. Past and Future do not exist. Reality exists NOW. What exists change but everything is forever NOW and changing NOW. Time is like numbers, they do not exist outside our Minds, they are pure cultural construction but fundamental for us to construct other cultural constructions we call science and mathematic. So the time of Newton was independent of events in space while the time of Einstein was intricatly linked to events in space. Better type of construction but both are pure construction with no reality whatesoever outside of our Minds as the calendars had no reality in Nature, pure construction, extremely usefull one but pure construction.

Regards,

- Louis

Dear Louis,

“…Yes humans see changes but nobody ever saw time….”

- yeah, that is so; humans don’t have some direct sensor “to see time” – as, say. eyes are at direct observation of space, however from that something isn’t observably by humans by no means it follows that this something doesn’t exist;

- and so that

“… which [time] is a purely human construction for us to coordinate our activities. Past and Future do not exist. Reality exists NOW. What exists change but everything is forever NOW and changing NOW. Time is like numbers, they do not exist outside our Minds, they are pure cultural construction but fundamental for us to construct other cultural constructions we call science and mathematic.…..”

- is a typical mainstream philosophical [in this case rather popular Kantians, though in the mainstream rather numerous other equally transcendent versions of “ontology of time” exist], i.e. some transcendent, and really incorrect, claim.

Really, again, the absolutely fundamental [“Logos” set element, what is Logos” set see SS post above and first link] phenomenon/notion “Time”

[and “Space” about which in the mainstream a lot of transcendent “ontologies” exist also, utmost popular – the “fundamental relativistic space/time/spacetime properties and effects” in the SR/GR, and further in mainstream philosophy, which is highly excited by this]

- can be, and is, really scientifically defined only in framework of the SS&VT “The Information as Absolute” conception, so more see the SS post above and links in the post, here only note, that “Time” – and the also “Logos” set elements “Space” - are logical possibilities for something could change.

So both are actualized in all/every concrete case [concrete informational pattern/system, while there exist nothing besides some informational patterns/system, which are elements of the absolutely fundamental and absolutely infinite “Information” Set] as the fundamentally independent space and time dimensions.

Both so are rather similar, but are fundamentally different in that that there can be arbitrary number of changes of something, and “to place somewhere” [and in this case the somewhere is “space”] any concrete something and her/his/its concrete change so there can exist arbitrary number of “space dimensions”, say, Matter exists and changes directly be observing in 3 [really in 4] space dimensions;

- while “Time” relates to the “Logos” set element “Change”, which is absolutely universal – there can be any concrete changes, but all they are just changes, while “Change” really is self-inconsistent, and so any instant changes in any infinitesimal point “NOW” are logically prohibited [just so, say, on QM level changes are quantized and uncertain].

Correspondingly any change happens somewhere that isn’t equal zero, this somewhere is just the actualization of “Time” - “time dimension”.

So the first difference of Time from Space is that for all changing “Information” Set elements it is enough to be only one, universal for all concrete changes, time dimension.

The 2-nd difference is in that while in any space dimension changes can be arbitrary, including “forward and backward”, say, a car cam move from point A to point B and back, in time dimension at every change of anything only her/his/its forward [positive in time dimension axis] motion is possible.

The post is rather long already, so more see the SS post above and links in the post; here only note, that, say, if a car moves from A to B, be always, of course, in a “NOW” moment only in a current point C, from that by no means follows that the spaces between A and C, and C and A [and the space of whole Matter], don’t exist. Quite equally from “NOW” in time dimension fundamentally by no means it follows that Past and Future in the dimension do not exist;

- and here is 3-rd fundamental Space/Time difference – while all space dimensions “really” are limited, even if are infinite, but the time dimension completely really is absolutely infinite, it fundamentally hasn’t some beginning and end.

Cheers

The exploration of the human brain, mind, and consciousness reveals a complex relationship between the tangible and the intangible aspects of human cognition. This text distinguishes between the brain and the mind, drawing an analogy between them and computer hardware and software. While the brain serves as the physical organ associated with the body, the mind is portrayed as the realm of thoughts, emotions, and imagination. In everyday language, the terms "brain" and "mind" are often used interchangeably, despite their distinct roles. The brain acts as the biological foundation for mental activities, while the mind encompasses processes such as thought, perception, emotion, and memory.

This text underscores the unique cognitive abilities of the human mind, including logical reasoning and problem-solving, enabling humans to interpret their environment and develop practical solutions. It highlights the essential role of the human mind in advancing scientific knowledge, replacing superstitions with empirical explanations for phenomena, including the causes of diseases. In short, this exploration deepens our understanding of the intricate interplay between the brain and the mind, affirming the mind's pivotal role in human cognition, scientific progress, and the evolution from superstition to knowledge.

Keywords: Human brain, Mind, Consciousness, Brain-mind relationship, Cognitive processes, Logic and reasoning, Scientific advancement, Superstitions, Empirical knowledge, Disease causation, Perception, Thought, Emotion, Memory, Problem-solving,

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