How We Perceive Time

Post by Leanna Kalinowski

What did we learn?

The hippocampus has long been considered important for regulating memory of elapsed time. Research in 2021 further advanced our knowledge of the mechanisms underlying this process. For example, Reddy and colleagues identified a role of hippocampal time cells in the human brain, demonstrating the capacity of these cells to store sensory information in a sequential fashion in the presence or absence of a stimulus. Another group of researchers, Dias and colleagues, uncovered how connections between the hippocampus and other brain regions regulate time perception. Specifically, they found that neurons in the medial entorhinal cortex play an important role in reproducing memorized time intervals and passing that information along to the hippocampus.

What's next?

This research paves the way in better understanding how (1) the brain measures and perceives time and (2) how this time perception is incorporated into our memory. Future research in 2022 and beyond is anticipated to further expand our understanding of the brain circuits involved in time perception.