In an uncomfortable doctor’s office, I found myself slumped in a wheelchair. The clock on the wall seemed to tick in an erratic manner, as if someone was playing with time itself. Dr. W’s words floated through the air, lacking any rhythm or flow. I struggled to understand when she had finished a sentence, constantly interrupting her. This appointment was a result of my lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease that had taken a turn for the worse. Lupus cerebritis, a severe inflammation of the brain, had caused my condition to deteriorate rapidly. It all began when I stood up after a violin lesson and found myself unable to walk. There was no pain, just a strange refusal of my legs to move. As the weeks went by, my brain continued to degrade despite the medications and treatments prescribed by my doctor. I lost feeling in my left arm, forgot simple things like my favorite color or whether I enjoyed yogurt. Memories of my childhood and even recent events slipped away. My emotions went from anger to excitement to deep sadness in a matter of hours. I started hallucinating, seeing fireworks on my bedroom ceiling and experiencing distortions in my surroundings. Unable to walk, communicate, or think clearly, I spent months in bed, unsure if I would ever recover. As a trained musician, one of the things I mourned the most was my ability to understand time. Synchrony is essential in an orchestra or string quartet, with each musician playing in perfect harmony with the others. Years of practice and study enable them to control the flow of time, speeding up or slowing down with precision. I had dedicated countless hours to mastering the viola and building a career as a musician. The thought of losing that skill within a month was terrifying. We all yearn for more time, not for time to disappear completely. Being detached from the passage of time felt like being trapped in a chaotic moment with no end in sight. I had no concept of how long I had been ill, when I would be fed, or when I would recover. Seconds stretched on indefinitely, and my requests for food or coffee seemed to take hours to fulfill. My ability to comprehend longer periods of time was also affected. I referred to everything in the past as happening “yesterday,” unable to recall specific dates or months. I no longer understood appropriate times to call loved ones, and the concept of being “busy” eluded me. Stuck in bed without a sense of time, my illness felt like an eternal torment. As I lay there, I tried to understand the underlying cause of my brain’s dysfunction. Learning about neuroscience offered some solace, helping me accept my condition. The perception of time is not localized to a single area of the brain but relies on the timing of neural transmissions throughout. Inputs from the external world, internal sensations, and memories all contribute to our brain’s sense of time. Recent studies have revealed that the brain is not as compartmentalized as previously believed. Rather than residing in specific locations, information is processed by numerous small units throughout the brain. Researchers have discovered that the brain’s ability to measure time involves a collaboration of different brain areas, which vary based on specific tasks and demands. While the brain can accurately measure short spans of time, it struggles with longer periods. A breakthrough study suggested that the brain derives a subjective sense of time from the ongoing flow of experience, rather than explicitly encoding it. Episodes and memories play a crucial role in shaping our perception of time. As we go through our day, our brain records thousands of observations, reactions to our environment. These observations are stored in our memory as episodes, with certain events acting as boundaries between experiences. These boundaries help the brain organize memories and create a sense of time. The brain’s perception of time is a complex and abstract process, influenced by external input, internal sensations, and memory. Understanding the intricacies of this process has offered me some understanding and acceptance of my own experience with time.
In the Absence of Time Perception: Insights into a World Altered by a Brain Injury
