BI 204 David Robbe: Your Brain Doesn’t Measure Time

Jan 29, 2025

David Robbe, a neuroscientist and leader of the Cortical-Basal Ganglia Circuits and Behavior Lab, dives into how we perceive time beyond traditional measurements. He challenges the notion of a 'clock' in our brains, suggesting that time estimations come from our interactions with the environment. Robbe explores the intriguing link between behavior and neural timing, highlights Bergson's philosophy on time and memory, and contrasts human cognition with AI's mechanical processing, raising questions about free will and survival instincts.

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INSIGHT

Time Measurement is External

We don't truly measure time internally, but rather estimate it based on external regularities.
Measurement, by definition, requires an external or observable standard.

ANECDOTE

Rodent Timing Experiments

David Robbe's research on time perception in rodents started with the assumption of an internal clock in the striatum.
Rodents in timing tasks often develop superstitious behaviors, challenging the internal clock hypothesis.

INSIGHT

Bergson's concept of Durée

Henri Bergson's concept of "durée" suggests we don't measure time directly but experience it as a continuous flow influenced by memory.
This flow is indivisible and cannot be measured directly, as measurement requires comparison with an external standard.

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When you play hide and seek, as you do on a regular basis I'm sure, and you count to ten before shouting, "Ready or not, here I come," how do you keep track of time? Is it a clock in your brain, as many neuroscientists assume and therefore search for in their research? Or is it something else? Maybe the rhythm of your vocalization as you say, "one-one thousand, two-one thousand"? Even if you’re counting silently, could it be that you’re imagining the movements of speaking aloud and tracking those virtual actions? My guest today, neuroscientist David Robbe, believes we don't rely on clocks in our brains, or measure time internally, or really that we measure time at all. Rather, our estimation of time emerges through our interactions with the world around us and/or the world within us as we behave.

David is group leader of the Cortical-Basal Ganglia Circuits and Behavior Lab at the Institute of Mediterranean Neurobiology. His perspective on how organisms measure time is the result of his own behavioral experiments with rodents, and by revisiting one of his favorite philosophers, Henri Bergson. So in this episode, we discuss how all of this came about - how neuroscientists have long searched for brain activity that measures or keeps track of time in areas like the basal ganglia, which is the brain region David focuses on, how the rodents he studies behave in surprising ways when he asks them to estimate time intervals, and how Bergson introduce the world to the notion of durée, our lived experience and feeling of time.

0:00 - Intro 3:59 - Why behavior is so important in itself 10:27 - Henri Bergson 21:17 - Bergson's view of life 26:25 - A task to test how animals time things 34:08 - Back to Bergson and duree 39:44 - Externalizing time 44:11 - Internal representation of time 1:03:38 - Cognition as internal movement 1:09:14 - Free will 1:15:27 - Implications for AI