Entrainment – how your internal bio / psychology is linked to external things
Circu-annual rhythms – our brain / body has a calendar system – via melatonin (regulates hormones, makes you sleepy at night)
Light is very powerful modulator of melatonin
When days are long = less melatonin release
Eg, winter = lower energy, lower mood
Longer days – make more testosterone and estrogen
Skin takes info about amount of light, turns into test & est – an endocrine organ, hormone influencing
Circadian rhythm – most powerful rhythm that we experience, none of us can overcome
Every cell in our body has a 24h timer
Influenced mainly of sunlight
Sleep broken into 90m cycles
Cannabis / serotonin – makes time slow down
Early in day – overestimate time passage – dopamine state
Late in day – underestimate time passage – serotonin state
Do hard things earlier in the day – dopaminergic circuits are more active – better able to parse that hard problem
You’re a more high resolution camera
Creative work – more serotonin helps / serotonin states – hence later in day
When sleep is disrupted – leads to dis-regulation of dopamine and serotonin states – they get mixed, we feel off, sense of passage of time is disrupted
People who experience trauma often OVERLOCK
Dopamine / epinephrine massively increased during event – frame rate increased – perceive things as happening in ultra slow motion
Good and bad – massive focus, but also much stronger memories of the incident – thus hard to forget the memory and its associations
Blinking = fine slicing time = shutter of life experience
Blink rate related to frame rate
Slow down = blink less
Speed up = blink more
Something fun = eg, kid’s day at amusement park = tons of dopamine = feel like the day goes by very fast, but in memory, will feel like it was very long, lots happened
In boring isolated environments, time dilates = time feels MUCH slower // but later, in retrospect, they seem like they passed very quickly (because we remember very little of it)
More novelty you experience with someone – feel like you know them more / better
How often and when you release dopamine — sets frame rate of time perception
Power of habits – specific, habitual routines – good way to incorporate dopamine system
Eg, morning habit that releases dopamine (eg, cold shower)
Helps us carve up our day’s experience
Book rec: Your Brain is a Time Machine