Science of time: What makes our internal clock tick

Neuroscientists are exploring how brain and body make sense of our most ephemeral resource.
By Melissa Healy
LA Times

March 9, 2009

In warp-speed modern America, time has become one of our most precious resources. We manage it, and we expend it carefully.

Ironic, then, that a resource as precious as seconds, minutes and hours is so poorly understood and so routinely misestimated by modern humans -- by 15% to 25% in either direction, depending on the individual and the acuity of his or her time perception. But understanding our ability to perceive time -- and to use time to make sense of our world -- is one of the newest and most sweeping frontiers of neuroscience.

Says UCLA neuroscientist Dean Buonomano: "In order to understand the nature of the human mind, we must unravel the mystery of how the brain tells time, in both normal and pathological states."

(More here.)