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“These cells encode information related to time, and this information is clearly important for memory,” said Dr Lega.
Indeed, said Dr Lega, the cells representing time were triggered to support activity, in this case to follow the passage of the 30-second interval. There is no constant rhythm or bottom beat; the hourly time signal is called up if necessary. “There is no internal metronome, nor a clock,” he says. The time cells “go off to support what you are doing.”
That is to say that the cells of time adapt to the demands made on the brain, in real time, moment after moment. Another group of neurons nearby, called ramp cells, accelerate its triggering when a task begins and decelerate or break down as the job ends, marking time slices. “Since these cells are sensitive to contextual changes during the experiment, they could represent the slowly changing nature of contextual information,” the authors write.
The coordinated activity of temporal cells and crawling cells, by itself, is far too fundamental to encompass the strangeness of pandemic time. This mechanism counts time in seconds and minutes, not days and weeks. Our perception of these longer intervals seems to be shaped much more by the amount and content of the memories that fill them, and the emotions that imprint them.
Starting in March, people had to absorb a huge amount of news and information about the virus, symptoms and various interventions, in addition to child labor and demands. But with home orders, the context flattened out. Each day was very similar to the last, the next and the next. Like being lost at sea, we floated in place as the earth turned beneath our feet.
Pandemic time, which is subjective in nature, is likely to feel warped for a while – until we hit land, however it turns out.
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