Your Brain Is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time

“(Buonomano] lays out the latest, best theories about how we understand time, illuminating a fundamental aspect of being human.”— New York
The brain—the most complex dynamical system in the known universe—tells, represents, and perceives time in multiple ways. In this virtuosic work of popular science, neuroscientist and best-selling author Dean Buonomano investigates the intricate relationship between the brain and time: What is time? Why does time seem to speed up or slow down? Is our sense that time flows an illusion? Buonomano presents his own influential theory of how the brain tells time, and he illuminates such concepts as free will, consciousness, spacetime, and relativity from the perspective of a neuroscientist. Drawing on physics, evolutionary biology, and philosophy, Your Brain Is a Time Machine reveals that the brain’s ultimate purpose may be to predict the future, and thus that your brain is a time machine.