In an episode of Star Trek TNG the android-who-would-be-human, Data, is trying to test the validity of the human saying “a watched pot never boils”. Data relates his disappointment in the experiment to a crew member. Having heated the pot several times, he finds that the time it takes the water to boil is exactly the same each time whether he watches or not. The crew member tells Data to try again, but this time to turn off his internal chronometer, because humans don’t possess them.

Does the brain contain an internal clock? For decades scientists have believed it was so but a new study from UCLA proposes that a series of physical changes to the brain’s cells helps the organ to track the passage of time.

According to Dean Buonomo, associate professor of neurobiology and psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a member of the university’s Brain Research Institute, “every time the brain processes a sensory event, such as a sound or flash of light, it triggers a cascade of reactions between brain cells and their connections. Each reaction leaves a signature that enables the brain cell network to encode time.”

In the study, research volunteers were asked to study the interval between two auditory tones under a variety of different conditions. A “distractor tone was randomly played preceding the interval. Researchers found that the “distractor tone” impaired the subject’s sense of timing.

“Our results suggest that the timing mechanisms that underlie our ability to recognize speech and enjoy music are distributed throughout the brain and do not resemble the conventional clocks we wear on our wrists,” Buonomano said.

Because time-related information is critical to understanding speech, determining how the brain tells time represents an important step toward understanding the causes of diseases, such as dyslexia, that result in impaired linguistic abilities, he said.

How Does Your Brain Tell Time?