JITOTM19: Time and Memory

What is the sound of ten bottles of pilsener being opened? That's not a Zen koan, it's a question about consciousness research! So it was "official business" when we popped a couple ourselves in honour of some ground-breaking research done on the perception of time by one Robert Ornstein.

Just like the old song says, "it's funny how time slips away." What Ornstein's research was concerned with is that time seems to slip away at different rates, depending on what we're doing at the moment. The busier the brain, the faster time seems to move, according to Ornstein's findings. It's not unlike the old truism about outbound trips being "slower" than return trips, or the the common idea that the Prairies seem endless while the Rockies zoom by...

Then there's the way your life itself zooms by, and how little of it you wind up remembering, especially the early memories from when you were a toddler. We talked about childhood amnesia in a JITOTM10, and Jay added a tidbit of understanding to this still-mysterious phenomenon...but we still welcome your ideas about that one. We raise our bottles to you in Episode 19 of Jay Ingram's Theatre of the Mind: Time and Memory.

Behind the curtain

Song of the Week "Slip Away" by David Leask

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