Our pets have the ability to measure time

All those who have a pet know it: our pets have somehow a sense of time. Just observe the behavior of the dogs just before lunch time or when the hour of their daily walk is approaching. Thus, many examples can make us think that our pets have some sort of mental clock.

In this regard, according to the results of a recent survey, it has been shown that in reality, animals have an explicit representation of time in their brains. In fact, a particular brain structure is responsible for that particular function.

Animals have a sophisticated sense of time

To study this phenomenon, Daniel Dombeck and a team of researchers from the University of Northwestern (USA) conducted an experiment. Specifically, we worked with a group of mice to perform a time measurement task, while their brain activation was measured.

In a virtual reality environment, the mice had to turn a wheel for six seconds to open a door; in this way, they could go on their way to receive food as a reward. After that, it was observed that the mice had learned the operation, despite the change of task.

That is, despite the removal of the door in question, the mice continued to turn the wheel for six seconds, then moved to the place where the door was, waiting for its maintenance; that, even if visually, and the door did not exist.

In this perspective, researchers suggest that animals have a notion of time; In short, the only way to solve the task satisfactorily was to use the internal sense of time in the brain. In addition, it was observed that while performing the task, the entorhinal cortex of the mice, a brain structure associated with memory, was activated as part of the neural mechanism of the sense of time.

The entorhinal cortex controls the sense of time of our pets

In view of the results, the researchers suggest that animals have a similar perception of time to humans. Moreover, this function is controlled by the entorhinal cortex. After performing the experiment, it has been shown that mice are able to perform a task that, in the absence of sense of time, would be impossible to perform.

So, in addition to explaining how pets can anticipate what will happen depending on the time of day, these findings could have some implications in the field of Alzheimer's study. . As the researchers explain, people with Alzheimer's disease suffer from memory laps in which they forget certain things and how that was possible.

Now, thanks to the results, there is evidence that the entorhinal cortex is involved in this process. Therefore, further research is suggested to determine to what extent these findings correspond to the human being, in addition to developing mechanisms to deal with these problems with greater efficiency.

Reference: Evidence of a sub-circuit in the medial entorhinal cortex representing the time elapsed during immobility, (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-018-0252-8