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Hjem A brain that builds time

A brain that builds time

Your brain doesn’t just passively track time – it structures it.

May-Britt Moser, Ben Kanter, and Edvard Moser are each holding a glass in their hands. The weather is nice, and they are standing outside. They are wearing summer clothes.
May-Britt Moser, Ben Kanter, and Edvard Moser are among the researchers behind the new discovery. Other researchers include Christine Marie Lykken and Ignacio Polti. Photo: Sophie Jessica Larson / The Kavli Institute

Denne artikkelen er også tilgjengelig på Norsk.

Published:
Written by
Rita Elmkvist-Nilsen

Researchers in the Moser Group at NTNU’s Kavli Institute have uncovered how the brain’s memory circuits create our sense of time. Their new study shows that activity in a key brain region (LEC) constantly drifts forward in a never-repeating pattern, even during sleep. This drift is intrinsic to the network – as if the brain is hard-wired to encode the flow of new experiences.

But when something meaningful or surprising happens, this drifting activity makes a sudden jump. These jumps act as neural bookmarks, segmenting the continuous stream of experience into distinct events and tagging them with unique signatures. This allows the brain to store and later retrieve each experience as a memory.

While the Mosers’ earlier Nobel-winning work revealed the brain’s internal GPS for mapping space, this new research shows how the brain also constructs the tapestry of time – allowing us to organise life into a sequence of meaningful experiences and memories we can revisit and learn from.