Your Brain Is a Time Machine
The Neuroscience and Physics of Time
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Narrated by:
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Aaron Abano
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By:
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Dean Buonomano
About this listen
A leading neuroscientist embarks on a groundbreaking exploration of how time works inside the brain.
In Your Brain Is a Time Machine, brain researcher and best-selling author Dean Buonomano draws on evolutionary biology, physics, and philosophy to present his influential theory of how we tell and perceive time. The human brain, he argues, is a complex system that not only tells time but creates it; it constructs our sense of chronological flow and enables "mental time travel" - simulations of future and past events. These functions are essential not only to our daily lives but to the evolution of the human race: without the ability to anticipate the future, mankind would never have crafted tools or invented agriculture. The brain was designed to navigate our continuously changing world by predicting what will happen and when.
Buonomano combines neuroscience expertise with a far-ranging, multidisciplinary approach. With engaging style, he illuminates such concepts as consciousness, spacetime, and relativity while addressing profound questions that have long occupied scientists and philosophers alike. What is time? Is our sense of time's passage an illusion? Does free will exist, or is the future predetermined? In pursuing the answers, Buonomano reveals as much about the fascinating architecture of the human brain as he does about the intricacies of time itself. This virtuosic work of popular science leads to an astonishing realization: Your brain is, at its core, a time machine.
Download the accompanying reference guide.©2017 Dean Buonomano (P)2017 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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You are reading the word now right now. But what does that mean? What makes the ephemeral moment "now" so special? Its enigmatic character has bedeviled philosophers, priests, and modern-day physicists from Augustine to Einstein and beyond. Einstein showed that the flow of time is affected by both velocity and gravity, yet he despaired at his failure to explain the meaning of now. Equally puzzling: Why does time flow? Some physicists have given up trying to understand and call the flow of time an illusion.
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Physics mixed with spiritual claptrap!
- By Effe Oake on 04-03-17
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Galileo's Error
- Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness
- By: Philip Goff
- Narrated by: Maxwell Caulfield
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Understanding how brains produce consciousness is one of the great scientific challenges of our age. Some philosophers argue that consciousness is something "extra", beyond the physical workings of the brain. Others think that if we persist in our standard scientific methods, our questions about consciousness will eventually be answered. And some suggest that the mystery is so deep, it will never be solved.
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Good but basic
- By ginger on 01-23-20
By: Philip Goff
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Billions & Billions
- Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium
- By: Carl Sagan
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo, Ann Druyan
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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In the final book of his astonishing career, Carl Sagan brilliantly examines the burning questions of our lives, our world, and the universe around us. These luminous, entertaining essays travel both the vastness of the cosmos and the intimacy of the human mind, posing such fascinating questions as how did the universe originate and how will it end, and how can we meld science and compassion to meet the challenges of the coming century?
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To The Stars
- By Judy on 12-31-19
By: Carl Sagan
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The Superluminal Universe
- Redefining Consciousness, Time and Space
- By: Régis Dutheil, Brigitte Dutheil, Matt Raymond - translator
- Narrated by: Ray Greenley
- Length: 5 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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The Superluminal Universe reveals, for the first time in English, the incredible insights of French quantum physicist Professor Regis Dutheil. Thanks to the development of particle accelerators, physicists are now able to propel particles (tachyons) at a speed close to that of light (300,000 km per second). At these extreme speeds, the laws that govern our universe no longer apply. Professor Dutheil's work has shown that the theory of relativity is not incompatible with that of tachyons, provided that we allow for the possibility of a double reality.
By: Régis Dutheil, and others
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From Bacteria to Bach and Back
- The Evolution of Minds
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 15 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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What is human consciousness, and how is it possible? This question fascinates thinking people from poets and painters to physicists, psychologists, and philosophers. From Bacteria to Bach and Back is Daniel C. Dennett's brilliant answer, extending perspectives from his earlier work in surprising directions, exploring the deep interactions of evolution, brains, and human culture.
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The only other review was so bad that I wrote this
- By Adam on 02-13-17
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Until the End of Time
- Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe
- By: Brian Greene
- Narrated by: Brian Greene
- Length: 14 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Until the End of Time is Brian Greene's breathtaking new exploration of the cosmos and our quest to find meaning in the face of this vast expanse. Greene takes us on a journey from the big bang to the end of time, exploring how lasting structures formed, how life and mind emerged, and how we grapple with our existence through narrative, myth, religion, creative expression, science, the quest for truth, and a deep longing for the eternal.
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Uneven
- By NJ on 03-03-20
By: Brian Greene
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Being You
- A New Science of Consciousness
- By: Anil Seth
- Narrated by: Anil Seth
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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What does it mean to “be you” - that is, to have a specific, conscious experience of the world around you and yourself within it? There may be no more elusive or fascinating question. Historically, humanity has considered the nature of consciousness to be a primarily spiritual or philosophical inquiry, but scientific research is now mapping out compelling biological theories and explanations for consciousness and selfhood.
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Not engaging, nothing new
- By Tristan on 11-22-21
By: Anil Seth
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An End to Upside Down Thinking
- Dispelling the Myth That the Brain Produces Consciousness, and the Implications for Everyday Life
- By: Mark Gober
- Narrated by: Mark Gober
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Consciousness creates all material reality. Biological processes do not create consciousness. This conceptual breakthrough turns traditional scientific thinking upside down. In An End to Upside Down Thinking, Mark Gober traces his journey. He explores compelling scientific evidence from a diverse set of disciplines, ranging from psychic phenomena to near-death experiences to quantum physics and beyond.
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Religion Pretending to be Science
- By David Larson on 10-10-18
By: Mark Gober
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Consciousness and the Brain
- Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts
- By: Stanislas Dehaene
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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How does the brain generate a conscious thought? And why does so much of our knowledge remain unconscious? Thanks to clever psychological and brain-imaging experiments, scientists are closer to cracking this mystery than ever before. In this lively book, Stanislas Dehaene describes the pioneering work his lab and the labs of other cognitive neuroscientists worldwide have accomplished in defining, testing, and explaining the brain events behind a conscious state.
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I had no idea we knew this much.
- By Tristan on 01-18-16
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Reality Is Not What It Seems
- The Journey to Quantum Gravity
- By: Carlo Rovelli, Simon Carnell - translator, Erica Segre - translator
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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From the New York Times best-selling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, The Order of Time, and Helgoland, a closer look at the mind-bending nature of the Universe. What are the elementary ingredients of the world? Do time and space exist? And what exactly is reality? Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli has spent his life exploring these questions. He tells us how our understanding of reality has changed over the centuries and how physicists think about the structure of the Universe today.
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Most compelling physics book in at least 10 years!
- By Kyle on 02-03-17
By: Carlo Rovelli, and others
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The Future of the Mind
- The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind
- By: Michio Kaku
- Narrated by: Feodor Chin
- Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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For the first time in history, the secrets of the living brain are being revealed by a battery of high-tech brain scans devised by physicists. Now what was once solely the province of science fiction has become a startling reality. Recording memories, telepathy, videotaping our dreams, mind control, avatars, and telekinesis are not only possible; they already exist.
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More breadth than depth
- By Gary on 03-20-14
By: Michio Kaku
What listeners say about Your Brain Is a Time Machine
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- David Turkington
- 08-28-19
Time was I knew what time was.
I look forward to re-listening to this book to remember the enjoyment I feel now.
Great topic with excellent execution.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Alan Hatcher
- 06-02-17
Author drowns in the flow of time
The author presents very interesting facts and data about the physics and neuroscience of time, but in the that's all the reader is left. The author fails to adequately draw a conclusion
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13 people found this helpful
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- Neuron
- 05-09-17
Great book on an underrated subject
I feel obliged to admit that, like the author, I am a scientist working on the neuroscience of timing. There are not many non-fiction books about time, behavior and neuroscience and therefore I simply had to read this book. And I am glad I did.
The book begins with a summary of the psychology, philosophy, pharmacology and physiology of time. The author has an excellent grasp of the issues at stake and the importance of doing research on these topics. How do humans measure short and long time intervals? What is the shortest time interval that we can detect? How does our body know when to go to bed and get up again, and how accurate is this circadian clock? How do drugs affect our time perception, and what does that tell us about the brain? How can neurons or neural networks detect measure time? I don’t agree with everything he says about the neuroscience of timing. However, it was a joy to read these chapters and, on their own, these six chapters justified the time and money spent on this book. During my own studies, I have read tons of studies on timing employing a broad spectrum of different techniques. This book helped me connect the dots and get a bird eyes view which is something that can get lost in science.
The book sidetracked a bit in chapter seven where Buonomano takes on the physics of time and the philosophical implications. Does time even exist, or is it (like many other things), a persuasive illusion that the brain construes to give us an advantage in evolution? Is presentism (only the ‘now’ exists) or eternalism (time is another dimension and ‘now’ is to time what ‘here’ is to space) the correct model of the universe? What does our subjective sense of time tell us about time itself? These more philosophically oriented questions are taken on, at depth, and Buonomano even gets into the ‘shooting particles in moving trains’ thought experiments to explain the implications of Einstein's theory of relativity. I, perhaps naively, did not expect to encounter so much of Einstein in this book, but in the author's defense, he does an excellent job of explaining the implications of relativity, and he even manages to link it back to the psychology and neuroscience of timing.
In the last chapter, the author returns to the core issues. He discusses whether animals plan for the future (they clearly do) and whether they reflect on the future in the same way that we do (debatable). We also get to meet the Pirahã tribe who, according to an anthropologist/missionary who lived with them, lives in the here and now. They were, for instance, quite unimpressed with Christianity when they realized that their visitor had never actually met Jesus. In the last chapter, the author also takes on free will. If time is just another dimension that we can, at least in theory, travel across, then that should logically mean that everything that is going to happen has already happened which presumably means there is no free will. Free will, the author suggests may only be the feeling associated with making decisions - just like we feel pain when we get painful stimulation.
All in all, if you are interested in time and its relation to human behavior - then this book is the book is for you.
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75 people found this helpful
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- DD
- 10-18-22
Another way to interpret thinking
Great concepts to reflect on and perhaps even act on as we become aware of how the mind works.
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- Christopher T. Graebe
- 08-06-18
Comprehensive
I really appreciated the way the author addressed time from multiple perspectives and acknowledged what we don't know about the nature of time. The book is definitely accessible to the non-scientist. Would probably be best, though, to have had some introduction to the notion that all of what we perceive as "real" is a construction of the mind/brain, before wading into this book, because there is little "breaking in" of this idea, other than to acknowledge that much of our perception is an "illusion" created in/by the brain (eg, pain, color, etc.). I would definitely recommend the book to anyone who wants to wrestle with the concept of time.
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2 people found this helpful
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- BB
- 03-26-22
Especially
interesting! Why? Because the author, just like the rest of us, really doesn't know what time is. But he did have some very interesting ideas to what makes us think we know...
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1 person found this helpful
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- Kent be Happier!
- 07-27-17
Well done research, interesting topic, but...
Well done book, but it becomes one of the most repetitive books I've ever read a he must rehash the same story and concept, one specific part in at least 15 different chapters. it's a good story he keeps rehashing, but the same point/story over and over just becomes too redundant (story of how black tar heroin came to the states ). take that one point out and it's excellent. terrific writing, great investigative journalism.
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28 people found this helpful
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- MiniLover
- 12-18-18
amazing book!
a must listen! very complete and enticing. I highly recommend it. combines science and biology.
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4 people found this helpful
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- wbiro
- 02-06-21
A '10' for Cognitive Science, a '0' for Time
Score:
Time and the Philosophy of Time: Zero
At several points I wondered how long the author could talk without saying anything of significance. You get mountains of twaddle. The author also has no clue as to what time is (a tool for tracking change). He comes close once or twice, but falls back into popular misconceptions (that time is a component of the physical world - it is not, change is).
Cognitive and Neuroscience: Ten
He does present some interesting experiments in cognitive and neuroscience, but again, weaves in the unnecessary mysticism born of not realizing what time is (a tool, and not something 'mysterious' or 'an illusion').
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26 people found this helpful
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- Carlos Motta
- 02-08-20
great research but useless for the real life
I gave 3 stars bc the author did a great job in researching, but forgot to link it to how we can use it in real life. voice is fine.
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2 people found this helpful