This is how your brain tells time

Did you make it to work on time this morning? Go ahead and thank the traffic gods, but also take a moment to thank your brain. The brain’s impressively accurate internal clock allows us to detect the passage of time, a skill essential for many critical daily functions. Without the ability to track elapsed time, our morning shower could continue indefinitely. Without that nagging feeling to remind us we’ve been driving too long, we might easily miss our exit.

But how does the brain generate this finely tuned mental clock? Neuroscientists believe that we have distinct neural systems for processing different types of time, for example, to maintain a circadian rhythm, to control the timing of fine body movements, and for conscious awareness of time passage. Until recently, most neuroscientists believed that this latter type of temporal processing – the kind that alerts you when you’ve lingered over breakfast for too long – is supported by a single brain system. However, emerging research indicates that the model of a single neural clock might be too simplistic. A new study, recently published in the Journal of Neuroscience by neuroscientists at the University of California, Irvine, reveals that the brain may in fact have a second method for sensing elapsed time. What’s more, the authors propose that this second internal clock not only works in parallel with our primary neural clock, but may even compete with it.

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Study of link between night eating and the peculiar internal clock of fat cells

When researchers at the University of Pennsylvania messed with the internal clocks of mouse fat cells, a surprising thing happened.

The mice got fat.

Figuring out why led to more surprises. Mice usually eat at night, but the altered mice ate more of their food during the day. They got fat even though they ate the same number of calories as regular, nocturnal-feeding mice.

And when the researchers gave altered mice two of the key ingredients in fish oil, the animals didn’t get fat.

That’s a lot to digest, but it has potential implications for humans as we enter the season of stuffed refrigerators that beckon some to eat when they should be resting.