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How the growth of our brains creates our sense of time
Things happen. Sometimes we expect them. Other times they surprise us. Sometimes we remember them. Sometimes we forget. We only notice them to the extent that they affect our brains.
Our brains are vital parts of us as living organisms. Like the other parts of our bodies, they grow and age as we do, and events determine exactly how they grow. And like other living organisms — trees for example — the growth of each of us, including our brains, is unique.
We don’t yet know exactly how our brains work, but some aspects of their overall functionality are fairly clear.
We experience events either as expected or as unexpected. Sometimes we expect an event, but when it occurs is unexpected.
Among expected events, we distinguish between events that we expect to cause and events that we expect to have other causes. We call the former kinds of events our plans, and when we cause those events to occur, we call them our actions.
The operation and growth of nerve-cell networks in our brains enables us both to anticipate (or to imagine) and to remember (or re-imagine) events. Parts of our brains, including our hippocampus, grow in accordance with which events our brains have experienced as results of our sensory…
