Perception of time

[BrentNewland]

I posted this on my blog and I wanted to get some feedback on it. Note I did not do any research prior to writing this down, it was only after that I found similar information might be available.

 

I was recently thinking about how time has always seemed to move differently for me than other people (i.e. when I last saw my friend was only a month ago, but it seems like at least 4 months). I was forced to think: How do we tell time? How do we see how much time has passed? The answer is obvious: we relate to time through our memories, because time to us is basically a string of moments. We tell how long ago something was by its relation to other memories and by how hard it is to remember certain details from that memory. I.E. the longer time goes on the more memories you will lose - similar to video compression, your mind removes a certain number of frames, giving you the same sequence in less space. But what if someone has memory problems? Their mind will do this after a short period of time, and something that was a short time ago will appear to be a long time ago, because their memories of recent events are so compressed.

 

edit I have searched the internet on this subject, and found a paper by Aristotle on the subject. I'm not sure why, but I can't seem to read the whole paper :/ Anyways, I feel that more explanation is needed.

 

Let us equate a sequence in time to the alphabet (for chronological purposes, since everyone knows the alphabet)

 

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

 

Z is the most recent event. In a normal person, the memory compression would be like this:

 

A_C_EF_HI_KLM_OPQ_STUV_XYZ

 

with the blank spaces being points of time that have been dropped from the mind due to insignificance (determined by the amount of certain chemicals in the brain at the time of the memory; this implies that each memory has a fingerprint or hash that tells the brain how important the memory is). Now, someone with short-term memory problems would end up with compression like this:

 

A___E___I__L__O__R__U_W_YZ

 

The long term memory receives higher compression, and the short term memory is compressed sooner. This could be caused by a lack of proper space, an imbalance of the proper chemicals in the brain not giving memories the right level of importance, or a problem in the brain itself that causes the importance threshold to be higher than normal, causing it to believe that high importance memories should be compressed more or removed.