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Science of Perception Box
Is Time Real? How Your Brain Perceives the Past with Dr. Lila Davachi
00:44:30
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- [00:00]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
Time itself doesn't really exist in memory. And I would argue that time doesn't really exist after a few seconds, that it's really about where we're putting our attention, our internal mental context, how we are basically orchestrating our mind, what we're orchestrating our minds to think about.
- [00:19]
Elizabeth Koch
Hi, I'm Elizabeth Koch. We all live inside our own personal, private perception box built by our genes and the physical, social and cultural environment in which we were born and raised. In this podcast, we explore how although the walls of this mental box are always present, they can expand in states like awe, wonder, and curiosity, or contract in response to anxiety, fear, and anger. I'd like to introduce our esteemed hosts, two incredible and distinguished minds, Dr. Heather Berlin, professor of Psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School ofMEDIC at Mount Sinai in New York City, and Dr. Christoph Koch, chief scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot foundation and the current meritorious investigator and former president of the Allen Institute for Brain Science. Welcome to the Science of Perception Box. Hi, everybody. Welcome to Science of Perception Box. I'm your co host, Dr. Heather Berlin.
- [01:30]
Dr. Christoph Koch
And I'm your co host, Dr. Christoph Koch.
- [01:33]
Elizabeth Koch
Every week we feature an aspect of the Science of Perception Box, highlighting the latest research. Together with our expert guests this week, we're exploring the relationship between memory, time, and perception. I'm thrilled to welcome Dr. Layla Devaucci, a leading neuroscientist at Columbia University, whose groundbreaking work sheds light on the mysteries of the brain and its relationship with time. Dr. Divaci investigates how we encode and retrieve memories. Her work reveals that our perception of time is more fluid than we might think. In her research, she uncovers how the richness of our experiences, how varied and eventful they are, can stretch or compress our sense of time. Through fascinating MRI experiments, she shows that the brain's hippocampus plays a pivotal role in memory creation. While our internal experience can transform the way we perceive the external world, first we want to share our own connection to memory. So, Christoph, what do you see as the relationship between perception and memory?
- [02:39]
Dr. Christoph Koch
Well, what do you expect from a guy who wears all yellow?
- [02:43]
Elizabeth Koch
Is this how you want to be remembered?
- [02:45]
Dr. Christoph Koch
I maintain my sunny disposition because I think partially because what I choose to remember and whether those are positive or negative effects. So I think there's a strong relationship between the way you perceive the world and what you focus on and then what you remember, and that makes up your experience, reality. Your perception works well.
- [03:05]
Elizabeth Koch
There's two different issues there. I think. One is, do you think that very strong Pronounced stimuli will help you remember something better, or is it that you just want the memory to be associated with a very positive emotion?
- [03:17]
Dr. Christoph Koch
The latter. Primarily. I choose to. I think, consciously choose to primarily remember good things about the world.
- [03:25]
Elizabeth Koch
You choose to remember good things about the world.
- [03:26]
Dr. Christoph Koch
That's the way how I do it. And I think we can all do that. We can choose to remember troubled things or insults or slides, or we can just choose to remember the positive things that we encounter.
- [03:37]
Elizabeth Koch
So basically, if we both encounter the same scene or other people encounter the same scene, what people remember from that scene can vary based on what their sort of perception is.
- [03:47]
Dr. Christoph Koch
What they focus on.
- [03:48]
Elizabeth Koch
Yes, what they focus on. So a person who's depressed might just pick up on all the sort of negative aspects that's more salient to them, versus somebody who has a happy disposition might remember.
- [03:58]
Dr. Christoph Koch
And if you do this consistently as a trait, I think it builds up your view of reality, your reality, because it's the only one you have.
- [04:08]
Elizabeth Koch
Well, I mean, we have an expert here who can help us with answering some of these questions. So, Leila, welcome to the podcast.
- [04:17]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
Thank you. It's great to be here. Well, it turns out that emotions do influence memory, and negative and positive emotions do so in different ways. Which is relevant to what you were just saying. Really? Negative experiences produce a very vivid memory, but that memory is fragmented and it doesn't include the context, what happened before, what happened after. But you can have a really sort of invasive, almost ruminative negative memory. But positive experiences, on the other hand, tend to produce more flexible integrated memory, so that there's almost a bigger memory, there's more to remember, and it's more flexible. And research has shown that when you are in an experience and you're positively motivated, let's say, searching for reward, that you do activate the hip campus more, and that creates a more flexible memory representation. But if you're in that same environment, but you're avoiding a threat, you're trying to escape, you don't activate the hippocampus. In fact, you activate cortical structures. And later on you do remember that event, but you don't remember much about it. It's fragmented. So the central parts of a negative experience are remembered probably too well. But all of the important and interesting other parts of that memory are not there for negative experiences.
- [05:39]
Elizabeth Koch
That's really interesting. So this is the first time heard of this, that when it's a highly negative experience, it doesn't activate the hippocampus.
- [05:48]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
That's been shown in human fmri and in some rodent work, yes, but a.
- [05:53]
Elizabeth Koch
Positive experience would activate the hippocampus.
- [05:56]
Dr. Christoph Koch
So patient who doesn't have a hippocampus anymore because it's been surgically removed, they would not remember. Truly negative aversive.
- [06:04]
Elizabeth Koch
Oh no, they remember it from. It activates the cortex. So there's memory areas in the cortex as well. Right.
- [06:11]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
So patient. This is really interesting. Patients with complete hippocampal damage who are amnesiac still retain some aversive memories that they show in their behavior. So one of my favorite examples of this had to do with patient hm, who's very famous, who had no memory. If I was him and I walked out the door, I would never even remember meeting you. But if you had shook my hand and you had a little sharp pin on the inside of your palm, I would recoil. And if I left the room, I would come back and not remember you even with your yellow outfit. But I might not want to shake your hand anymore. That was an experiment that was shown. So they avoid engaging with the person who shocked them. So that tells you that there's something that remained about that negative experience, but it's unconscious without a hippocampus. Yeah, it appears unconscious because they can't really tell you much about the past.
- [07:03]
Elizabeth Koch
But it can't be that. Negative experiences, sometimes they're sort of hyper remembered. You know, like when people have PTSD and they can't stop thinking about these negative experiences.
- [07:14]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
Yeah, no, no, completely. So the central core of the experience, in that moment when something really negative is happening, your pupil dilates, you're taking. Actually time slows down. You're taking in a lot more information in that moment. At least that's the hypothesis. And that central information is well remembered, but nothing in the surroundings. Not the contextual stuff. Actually, contrary to what people believe, they will claim after a negative experience that their memory is really, really good. And we call this flashbulb memories. But actually when tested, their memory for what happened that day and the general context is no better than remembering what you had for lunch. It's not really special, but the central core information is really well remembered.
- [07:56]
Elizabeth Koch
Oh, that's interesting. And I do want to get into, in a little bit, I want to get into time perception during these experiences because that's something I'm actually really interested in and had done some research on time percept. So I want to dig in there. But first I just want to ask a general question of just like, what do you think the purpose of memory is?
- [08:13]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
I'm so glad that you're asking that question because 10 years ago, no one was asking that question. People were asking, how does memory work with the assumption that memory is there to remember? And I don't think that's what memory is for. I think now, after dedicating 25 years of my life to studying memory, that memory is there to help us understand the world, to build knowledge. So in other words, our memory systems are built to care about what's prioritized, what's important to learn from every day. And that's why probably the. The thing you can rely on the most about your memory is forgetting. Like, once you go to sleep, the memory system just doesn't consolidate and sort of literally trashes most of the day because it's not relevant to your survival. In other words, you've already learned so much about the world. So what tends to get consolidated during sleep, and this is when the memory system really gears up in action, is what is it gonna keep around? What kinds of memories are gonna undergo synaptic plasticity? And that's when you're increasing the communication between neurons so that you can remember that information later.
- [09:23]
Dr. Christoph Koch
This is doing specifically during slow wave sleep.
- [09:26]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
This happens during slow wave sleep. And we actually have evidence that that might be tagged during awake resting states as well. That's what we've been looking at recently. So there's an interplay, I think, between the aw at rest and sleep. But so memory is. Your memory system is trying to figure out, did you learn anything new today that is important to keep around? And it updates the cortex. It tells. So during sleep, it's teaching cortical neurons how to represent any kind of new, important information. So really, memory isn't for remembering. We think it's really for gathering knowledge and updating our knowledge of the world.
- [10:05]
Elizabeth Koch
So would it make sense, though? And I think this leads into the time perception, but that the older you get and the more buildup you've had of knowledge, so that maybe we.
- [10:16]
Dr. Christoph Koch
The less you needed, the less you.
- [10:18]
Elizabeth Koch
Need to remember in a way. Right? Because I know, you know, my children, they're like 7 and 10 now, they remember exquisite details of things that I just.
- [10:27]
Dr. Christoph Koch
They soak up everything.
- [10:28]
Elizabeth Koch
Everything. And they remember everything. And, you know, I forget most of them things. But maybe that's adaptive. Maybe it's just because my brain, it doesn't need that information as much anymore.
- [10:39]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
Absolutely. I think that instead of continuing to talk about aging as a deficit model, like memory in the lab, like little details aren't as well remembered, it's important Socially, to remember people's names. But people are generally bad at remembering people's names, no matter how old you are. But it's true. This could explain.
- [11:00]
Elizabeth Koch
See, I got that.
- [11:02]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
This could explain what's typically thought of as a deficit, that as you age, your memories get worse. But what you are better at are knowing how the world works. And you can call that wisdom. You can call that making predictions. And there is research now showing that when older adults are facing the same memory question or when they're encoding what's thought of as a novel item, context, experience, experience. In the lab, they're activating more of their cortex than their hippocampus. And younger adults or children are activating more of their hippocampus. And that's another way of saying they're gathering those details to be replayed during sleep. But older people, maybe, you know, if your brain were talking, might be saying, oh, yeah, I know what's going to happen. No need to encode how much is.
- [11:49]
Dr. Christoph Koch
This process under voluntary control? So to what extent can I choose to remember, for instance, negative events, you know, some perceived insult that I may not want to recall, and primarily focus from positive memories? Or is this an illusion?
- [12:05]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
Each of us have our own natural orientation, but that doesn't mean it can't be changed. Let's say, like Christophe, you're up here and you think of. You see the world through this, like rosy glasses, and you're picking in that moment if you're able to attend to the positive aspects or reappraise in the moment. If someone is being rude to you in New York City, but you're thinking, oh, he probably had a bad day. It's not about me. Like, that kind of thinking may now, after many years, be where you are. And I may be down here. I may be really sensitive to perceived slights in my environment. And that means when I leave an experience, those memories are gonna pop up into my mind, and then I can choose to ruminate on them or not. I do believe that everyone can shift a little bit. Can I ever get to you? Maybe if I work on it. But I don't think we're stuck. But I do think that there are gonna be individual differences. And knowing where you are is important in figuring out how to move that. But I also believe that it's much easier if you can change the memory before it's become a memory in the moment. If your interpretation is there and the rosiness is already there, then that memory is more likely to be positive. It's much Harder to change a memory once it's become consolidated. Once it's there as a memory, then you're more suppressing it. And that is only minimally effective. Suppression only works. It works in the moment, but it doesn't seem to work in the long term.
- [13:32]
Elizabeth Koch
I'm thinking of it in terms of therapy. Right. Therapy can be used like cognitive behavioral therapy, cognitive reframing to move you up a bit, you know, move the needle up. But there is a limit in terms of say our genetic predisposition or the way our brains are wired. So there's certain our boundaries might be set, but within a range. And that therapy can get you a little higher, you know, so we do have the ability to change over time. We're not sort of stuck in that. But isn't it true though, each time you re remember something, you can rewrite it, you know, and that part of maybe also what therapy can do is help you rewrite it in a more positive way, in a more beneficial way.
- [14:13]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
Yeah, that's the big hope. Definitely. Every time you reactivate a memory, it becomes labile and open to change. But so far, how much you can change that? It's really hard to make a memory more positive. Not that it's impossible, but you can make it slightly more neutral.
- [14:32]
Dr. Christoph Koch
So you're telling us I have this distinct memory of my first kiss when I was 15. And are you telling me that every time I recall that I re encode it?
- [14:43]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
That is what we think. So when you activate a memory in the brain, when the neural ensemble or the engram is activated, it enters into a state of being moderately activated. And then that process can lead to either elements dropping out or elements coming in. Like if you're thinking about your 15 year old self and your first kiss, and then you quickly move to the kiss you had last Saturday in your mind and they're co activated. Not that you would necessarily confuse them. That would be the extreme. You might confuse them, but they can become integrated in the brain.
- [15:19]
Dr. Christoph Koch
But that really means a. The memory is radically different from a computer memory, right? Because.
- [15:23]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
Absolutely.
- [15:24]
Dr. Christoph Koch
And it also means that my memory is then amenable to being reinterpreted by myself, or what I tell myself about who I was 40 years ago.
- [15:33]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
Exactly. And that's why therapy should work so in the moment, activating the memory and then rethinking it, maybe perspective taking, even just being calm. If your body is not aroused in a negative way, when you're recalling a negative memory, that can help to disentangle. I call it the Body memory, the fear memory, the heart rate increase, you know, the sweatiness if you can feel calm. That's why propranolol works, because you have. If you have a beta blocker, which is a drug that's often used to. I'm not a medical doctor. Beta blockers are used for, like, stage fright. It's often given to patients with cardiac issues.
- [16:11]
Elizabeth Koch
It kind of calms down the nervous system. So you're, you know, keeps your heart.
- [16:14]
Dr. Christoph Koch
Rate study when you're re remembering your memory. While you take that, while you're taking.
- [16:19]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
A beta blocker, what you're doing is if you're retrieving a negative memory that would normally cause a lot of heart rate increase, and now your heart's not increasing, the brain has an opportunity to disentangle or separate those two events. That's like the hope for. For a lot of the use of propranolol. It hasn't been super successful yet, I will say, but there's still hope in trying to use with phobias.
- [16:41]
Elizabeth Koch
Like, if you give people propranolol and then introduce them to like, let's say, a spider or something, you can actually unlearn a fear in that. Even one trial. There's some studies that were done in the Netherlands on that.
- [16:53]
Dr. Christoph Koch
But now that you mentioned there is a spider behind you.
- [16:56]
Elizabeth Koch
Fortunately, that's not my fear. But if you mentioned a small plane, I might jump away. But there is this idea with therapy as well. You bring up a very negative emotion or memory in a neutral context with a safe person in a safe space. You can re encode it in a way that dissociates the negative feeling from the memory itself itself.
- [17:16]
Dr. Christoph Koch
But why does it so often not work for ptsd?
- [17:20]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
Well, it could just be that memories are so strong. I have my own experience with using propranolol to get rid of a fear of flying. So when I was on the job market for my very first job and I had. I was lucky enough to have multiple interviews, I would get on a plane to go to the interview. And my. My interpretation is that I was preparing and anxious for the interview, preparing my. What was I going to say to the professors I was meeting? And so my physiology was upregulated on the plane, you know, and then there I was on a plane that was like shaking. Maybe there was turbulence. So I think that my brain associated the plane context and the turbulence with my internal anxiety. So after the job market was done and I landed my job, Yay. I found out that before all of this, I never Was afraid on planes. And now even getting on a plane to go to the beach, I was anxious. All of the turbulence bothered me. I became really afraid of flying. And I first tried, like, you know, alcohol consumption. It didn't really work for me. I was still afraid.
- [18:27]
Elizabeth Koch
Alcohol consumption.
- [18:28]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
It didn't work in the long. And then I tried other medications that, you know, would knock me out and make me feel tired, but didn't get rid of my anxiety and fear of flying. So then I thought, I need to use science. And so my dad, who was a cardiologist, gave me a prescription for propranolol. And I took beta blockers on 1, 2, 3, 4, maybe 6 flights every time. And frankly, you know, I was a little headachy. I didn't notice anything in the moment. I still had that fear. But after six or seven times taking it, I now am much more calm on flights. I feel like I've unlearned, that my body has unlearned that association. So it is possible, has your brain.
- [19:09]
Dr. Christoph Koch
Unlearned or has it learned this new association, this new positive association, FL doesn't have to be associated with the racing heart.
- [19:17]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
That is a great question. And I don't. I think, you know, I would like to say the answer's usually in the middle. It's probably a little bit of both.
- [19:25]
Elizabeth Koch
So I did want to bring in time because this is something that fascinates me. So, you know, what is the relationship between time and memory and experience? And, you know, why is it that sort of time seems to expand? I actually just. I. I recently testified as an expert witness in a court case, and it was about this woman. She died, unfortunately, in a motorcycle accident, but she was conscious and aware during that time. And how, even though it was just a few seconds, when you're in that moment of sheer terror and, you know, impending, you know, death, that it can feel way longer in those moments. Right. So subjectively, you know, how do you explain that? What's the relationship between memory and experience and time?
- [20:20]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
So what I know about that is that. And we've all maybe had an experience where there's something really arousing that demands our attention in the moment, that it can feel like the world is slowing down a little. So those experiences are happening at a slightly slower rate so that you can take in more information.
- [20:39]
Dr. Christoph Koch
Bullet time in the Matrix.
- [20:41]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
Oh, bullet.
- [20:42]
Dr. Christoph Koch
Timely shooting as bullet goes incredible slowly towards the end.
- [20:45]
Elizabeth Koch
You're aware that that's fiction, but we'll go on.
- [20:49]
Dr. Christoph Koch
Oh, oh, thanks for pointing that out.
- [20:53]
Elizabeth Koch
Just wanted to make sure but it's.
- [20:54]
Dr. Christoph Koch
A cinematic depiction of the experience that you mentioned.
- [20:57]
Elizabeth Koch
Yes, yes.
- [20:58]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
So there is a lot of data suggesting that subjective measurements of time, your experience of time slows down in those really highly arousing moments. What we study in the lab is understanding whether that. How that translates into memories and how we remember time. And so that is what most of our research focuses on, is memory for time. And in that case, what we're seeing is that time itself doesn't really exist in memory. And I would argue that time doesn't really exist after a few seconds, that it's really about where we're putting our attention, our internal mental context, how we're basically orchestrating our mind, what we're orchestrating our minds to think about.
- [21:45]
Elizabeth Koch
Wait, this is such an extreme. So you're saying time does not exist in our memory. So something that occurred in, let's say, real clock time that was only a couple of seconds could feel like an hour in your memory, or something that lasted five hours could feel like a few minutes in your memory.
- [22:04]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
Yeah. So we don't really ask how long it feels in objective time, because I think people don't even know how to do that. I mean, in general, if I ask you to retrieve a memory from your traveling here this morning, subjectively, what you get is not a continuous unfolding of the trip. You get these, like, slight movements, just little snapshots of where you were. And those snapshots are probably happening at the times you made a turn in the car. Right. So there are these moments that. These experiences that we think tile our experiences, these boundaries between events. So whenever the context changes a little, the brain is taking in those moments. But how much time is in between, whether it was a really long trip on Broadway or just two blocks, takes up the same space in our brain.
- [22:55]
Elizabeth Koch
From just a neural perspective. When there's change, there's variation. There's dopamine that is released for novelty and that. That might tag these moments as being important to remember.
- [23:05]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
This is. Yeah, absolutely. There's dopamine. There's also norepinephrine, which is related to our attentional systems. And the norepinephrine is allowing, we think, is telling us to take in where. Where are you, what's your context like when your viewpoint changes in perception, the brain really quickly wants to know where it is. It really needs to have a sense of the context that it's in. And some people refer to that as the event model. What. What context am I in? What behaviors are required of me in this Context. So that's what the brain is really good about. Within a few hundred milliseconds, knowing exactly if it needs to change, what active representations are available to you. Dopamine is also released. And dopamine has been correlated with your ability to now form a new memory of that experience. So it has a more long term effect on the formation of the memory. And this is an area that is really kind of hot right now. And there's a lot of work that's being done to look at norepinephrine and dopamine at event boundaries.
- [24:08]
Dr. Christoph Koch
So tell me what happened during lockdown. Covid. Right. With time perception, when you talk about that. Because most of us have this feeling. On the one hand, it was way in the past. Most of us don't even remember it anymore. On the other hand, this year collapsed to one or two points.
- [24:24]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
Exactly. Exactly what happened there. So we all went through this similar experience and it was very difficult for everyone, including me. But it was also very motivating for our research. Before the pandemic, we had already been studying event boundaries and event representations and what's the relationship between kind of the ebb and flow of our daily lives and what's a memory? And we had been studying that. The pandemic.
- [24:51]
Dr. Christoph Koch
You mean the beginning and the end of a memory?
- [24:53]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
Yeah. What is one episodic memory? Where does it start, where does it end? And those are at these moments of discovered. But at the pandemic, there was no beginning and middle and end. We were always in the same context, the same and definitely space. So we were in the same apartment, in the same house. Maybe you were lucky enough to have a backyard. You were in your backyard. We all were having groceries delivered to us. And so what I think has happened is that there's been a global reduction in overall brain health over the pandemic. So not having those moments of novelty where norepinephrine is released, your pupils die. Like the brain is taking in information. It's like a muscle. Like really, like the brain is like a muscle. If you're not using it in the proper way, you're gonna see a deterioration. And so if we're in that same context for months, let's say March 2020, until, if you were lucky enough, September, you had some normalcy. But here in New York, really, it wasn't until a year later, where there was people, you were able to go out, you had those experiences. At the end of the day, you knew what had happened that day. You still had a little memory, a short Term memory. But now trying to recall all those memories, they're all represented in the same context, and so they're completely interfering with each other. So our normal consolidation mechanisms when you go to sleep, like I said, are built to kind of rehearse. The brain rehearses the important events, but it also rehearses the context. When did it happen? Where did it happen? And those keys help you to unlock the memory later on. So, again, if I ask you, like, what did you have for lunch yesterday? Your brain is first gonna go to, where. Where were you? What context was I in? And that's gonna help you to think about, oh, where was the plate situated? Where did it come in? Was I at a restaurant? But if you had a hundred meals in the same room, knowing what room you were in would not be a key that would work for a specific memory. It would work to tell you generally, where did we eat? But it wouldn't really give you any information about specifics. So we're all left with very few memories from the pandemic.
- [27:03]
Elizabeth Koch
That's so interesting. So it's really. Memory is tagged to, like, sort of changes. You tag it to things in the environment, in your context, but if everything is remaining the same all the time, you don't really have anything to kind of latch on. Yeah.
- [27:16]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
What do you latch onto?
- [27:17]
Dr. Christoph Koch
So it's not a faithful record of what happened, but more of the salient events that are new and novel and interesting.
- [27:23]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
Exactly.
- [27:23]
Dr. Christoph Koch
And so that seems to explain then, the paradox that seemingly time was very slow during the pandemic.
- [27:28]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
Very slow.
- [27:29]
Dr. Christoph Koch
And in hindsight, I can't even see actually what. Nothing much happened.
- [27:34]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
Right. The other side of that coin is when there's a lot happening in your day. Let's say you live a really busy life and you're constantly going from meeting to meeting, or you're on a vacation and you know, you're moving quickly through experiences. If you stop in that moment and someone asked you, how is your day going? How does time feel? You would report it going too fast. Like, time is going too fast. I kind of almost like, you don't like it. It's too much like, I feel frazzled. But in retrospect, that evenings, in retrospect, you could actually have. You have all these memories you can pick up and recall in detail. And so your memory for time expands. Later on, if you, you know, in the moment, you say, I have no time. Time is short. Time is short. Later on, as you're retrieving the memories, you're using those memories. To infer time, that's the paradox. And then you say, oh, it was a really long day. I had a lot going on, I swear.
- [28:28]
Elizabeth Koch
So much.
- [28:29]
Dr. Christoph Koch
So what's the best for mental health?
- [28:32]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
So this is what I was thinking about on the way. So the best is not one or the other. The best is again, something in the middle. And I actually think it's even more precision focused than that. I think what might be good for you might be different than what's good for me. And unfortunately, our world, especially the western world, is built up on from the time kids are three years old, they're being told when they need to do things and how long they need to be doing things. And so we're trying to push people into this box of 40 minute class, 5 minute break, 40 minute class, 5 minute break. And then in college and then in our jobs. And I think that at some point what we should do for ourselves as adults and then hopefully in the educational system is figure out what timescale works for us. In other words, we need to figure out how to interleave moments of stability. So we're forming these integrative memories and moments of change. So we need to have both in.
- [29:38]
Elizabeth Koch
The day and not all one or all the other. And what about these flow states too? When you get into kind of a flow state and you, you mean when.
- [29:45]
Dr. Christoph Koch
You are now when you're focused on.
- [29:47]
Elizabeth Koch
Something really intensely and it feels like time flies by and you know, where does that fit in?
- [29:54]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
I can't say that I have been in a flow state ever in my life. I'm feeling. Why don't you just.
- [29:59]
Elizabeth Koch
We need to talk more about this. It's a feeling where you lose your sense of, of time and self and place.
- [30:04]
Dr. Christoph Koch
You're fully engaged with the world. Like when climb or in long distance runnings, you have to be hyper focused in one sense. But it's not about the ego. You experience time, as Heather said, suddenly you sort of, you come to and realize, oh, here I am climbing or running or writing code. A lot of people have it when they write code. Totally absorbs you, but you're very content, very happy.
- [30:27]
Elizabeth Koch
So I have an example of where my perception of time was completely distorted in my memory and it happened when I was giving birth. I'll tell you my experience and maybe it's similar. No, not in the flow, but where time changed. If only, if only it was the last moments, what it felt like, the last moments when you had to push and push and push. But eventually I had to have an Emergency C section because she couldn't come out. But this pushing part of it, like, you would have to wait till the contractions come and then they would have you push and push. And to me, it felt like I tried doing that for like maybe 20 minutes or so until they said, you know, it's just not gonna work and we're gonna have to go for the C section. It turned out it was like three hours or something like that, which I still can't grasp my mind around.
- [31:15]
Dr. Christoph Koch
Oh, you expenses. It's 20 minutes.
- [31:17]
Elizabeth Koch
Yeah, I thought I tried pushing a few times and then they were like, no, we gotta go to the C section part. I had been in labor already for hours and hours and hours. So this was like at the tail end of it because I was like, you gave up so quickly and took me to the C section. Like, couldn't we try it harder? And they were like, you were there for three hours. I did not feel that at all. I don't remember any of that. I just remember about 20 minutes of pushing. But what was your experience? Was it different? Similar.
- [31:40]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
My experience with my first child was I was in labor for almost 72 hours, mostly at home, and it wasn't constant. So I would be in active labor Monday to Thursday, all night. I was in active labor about four or five minutes apart. And they tell you to go to the hospital around three or four. So I was waiting to cross that threshold. Active labor all night. And then as soon as the sun would come up, it would slow down. It was still there, but it would slow down. So this went on for three days and it felt forever. I had three turns of the sun, you know, just really slow. Never left the apartment. Would slowly have tried all kinds of things. And it just felt like it was never gonna end. It felt very long and extended. And I like to contrast that with like the one minute between actually giving birth to my daughter and being able to see her face and holding her. And in that, literally I didn't, you know, felt like one or two minutes. I was looking up at the CL and I heard everyone in the room and you heard the gel and the weight being called out. And my husband went and picked her up and she came and looked at me. And so now I have this very rich memory of the sequence of events that occurred in that two minute period. But my memory of the labor is just, I don't know, me floating around in a room. It's very small and very short, even though it was a much longer period of time. So I think that exemplifies some of the ideas that we're talking about.
- [33:11]
Elizabeth Koch
Yeah, I think really it does exemplify this. What I find fascinating, it really explains a lot for me as well, is that the more sort of monotonous the time is, it could be really long in real time, but your memory of it is much is contracted the more either numerous changing events that occur within a period of time or emotionally salient events that occur can be short in the real time, but in retrospect in your memory can be expanded.
- [33:42]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
Exactly. That's the paradox. So in some ways I think we like to prioritize the experience. If you're prioritizing your experience, then having that stability is nice. So think of, you know, a long day on the beach or a Sunday where you decide you're just going to stay home because you need to recoup. You need time in the moment to rest, but that's not going to be a day that you remember later on. And that's okay. Like sometimes we need to have those moments, but you don't want to have too many of those because that, that is what depression feels like. Nothing changes. Your mental state is constantly in the same space. And even though you're walking around the world and things are changing, I think that depression is another way of thinking about it, is that you're being drawn to this local minima of your brain always working in a similar way.
- [34:32]
Dr. Christoph Koch
Do depressive people have worse memory than non depressed? They do what many philosophers and computational people emphasize these days, that time itself is a construct of your mind. It doesn't really exist. There's not a natural mapping between external time and time in our head. It's a construct.
- [34:52]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
Yeah. Imagine then the ultimate freedom where instead of waking up the way we wake up, most people wake up and think, oh, I gotta get to work, gotta have a meeting. What's your day look like? Your calendars? We have the spatial representation of our day. Imagine waking up and thinking, well, what do I want to do today? What do I want to accomplish? Imagine it's just one goal, but it takes four hours. But you allow yourself the space to get deep into that context, your mental context, to really let yourself sort out who has problems. Where does it take to do? I feel like some of us have that freedom.
- [35:26]
Dr. Christoph Koch
We should, once you've retired, if you ever retired.
- [35:29]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
No, but I feel like that's the problem. I think that's a big problem with our field. As scientists, universities and institutes hire who they deem to be like the most productive creative People, then they put them on this crazy schedule that doesn't allow their brains to be deep and creative.
- [35:46]
Dr. Christoph Koch
So do retired people. Do they have different memories? Do they? Because they don't have this busy. Oh, my God. My first zoom call is in 10 minutes.
- [35:54]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
That's a good question. I don't know the answer to that. But I do tend to notice people who take up a new skill. They learn the piano or they learn painting. They allow themselves to get. Skill learning is really hard. It takes many hours. And, you know, and. And. And I think they allow themselves to pick up skills that are quite impressive. And we think of as mostly children are good at picking up those skills, but I don't know the answer to how they feel about time and memory.
- [36:22]
Elizabeth Koch
I think there's something to be said with not over scheduling and, you know, allowing yourself to take the time you need to think deeply or get deep into something. Can we please finish this discussion?
- [36:33]
Dr. Christoph Koch
I have a zoom call.
- [36:35]
Elizabeth Koch
Speaking of which. And the last thing you know, I think time does exist in the physical world like there is. You know, we can. Time is a dimension in physics, but our perception of time is a creation of our mind. And I've even looked at some of the research that I did.
- [36:47]
Dr. Christoph Koch
Time, I would disagree with that. There's this block time universe that says everything is simultaneous at the block.
- [36:53]
Elizabeth Koch
Okay, maybe there's no such thing as time, but our perception of time, our feeling of time, is a creation of the brain. And some of the research that I've done looks at when people have brain damage to certain parts of the brain, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in particular, it really affects their perception of time. People who have also orbital prefrontal cortex lesions, it affects their perception of time. So we know that it's. Our perception is created in our brain. And it can vary depending on the neurochemistry or the neuroanatomy, and we should just take it all with sort of a grain of salt, right? It's all. All a construct. So we end every episode asking a perception box question. And we don't know. I don't know what question. Kristof has chosen. He doesn't know what I have chosen. So we're gonna throw it out there, and we all can answer the question or not, depending on how you feel. So do you have a question?
- [37:56]
Dr. Christoph Koch
Yes, I do.
- [37:57]
Elizabeth Koch
Okay. Go for it.
- [37:59]
Dr. Christoph Koch
So what is the one memory that you keep on returning to? Is there sort of a dominant memory that you keep on returning to? And why would that be?
- [38:11]
Elizabeth Koch
So I Have to think of this.
- [38:14]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
Is there a dominant memory or something.
- [38:17]
Dr. Christoph Koch
That sort of spontaneously, unbidden, keeps on coming back once a day or.
- [38:21]
Elizabeth Koch
My mind is like a playground, right? And you get to choose where you go in it right. When you're just sort of daydreaming. So I have less intrusive. I don't have so many intrusive thoughts or memories, but I. Sometimes I'm like, it would be fun to remember this right now. Or I want to go live in this place for a moment. I had to go under general anesthesia just one time in my life for back surgery. And I was very nervous about it. And I was told to just, like. As you're getting wheeled into the. Or, like, before you go under, try to kind of think of something, a memory that brings you to sort of your happy place. Most people, it's like I'm on a beach or whatever. But for me, it was the. So I did. You know, my PhD was at Oxford at this. At Magdalen College, this beautiful college that was like magic to me. CS Lewis went there and. But it had these. This, like, the cloisters. And whenever I'd walk in these cloisters, it just brought me such peace and comfort and just like, I was connected to, like, history and whatever and a beautiful, like, wisteria growing. And that is my happy place. So whenever I feel nervous or anxious, I will just go back. And in my mind, it's, like, so vivid. I can see every detail. I can see myself walking through these cloisters and the bells chiming in the background. It brings me such peace and joy. So that's a memory I go back to a lot on purpose.
- [39:37]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't have an answer for you. I mean, I'm cued by what you said, and I can think. I love nature, and I would choose to be in nature because I feel more calm. But I'm. I'm constantly planning. And so I like. I'm a list maker. So my brain is oriented towards the future. I can't recommend that for me.
- [40:00]
Elizabeth Koch
You're a memory researcher who's focused on the future.
- [40:03]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
Right. So I am efficient. I'm reading a book by Miranda July, and there's a distinction between people who are Parkers versus drivers. Like, are you a Parker or a driver? And I love that distinction because I'm definitely a Parker. I'm a Parker even about driving. So. So, unfortunately, I can't. I don't have. I mean, my brain does tend to. I will admit it does tend to Reactivate situations that I wish would have gone differently. Like I play a lot of counterfactual thinking from the past, but I'm often planning. What about you? Can you answer your own question?
- [40:41]
Dr. Christoph Koch
Yeah, well, so I. Two incredible meaningful experience. One, this near death experience that I think about every day. It happened almost, you know, four and a half years ago. I returned to time after time because it was so meaningful. And then I had this sort of what people call a mystical experience again. And you come back to this bitten or unbidden? Constantly. Both by the way, have no time.
- [41:05]
Elizabeth Koch
So my question is, is there any action that you or something you want to do that or an action you want to take that you just don't feel ready yet to do or to take?
- [41:16]
Dr. Christoph Koch
Yes. And it's what you alluded to. To go to the state where I. I wake up and the entire day there's nothing planned. I'm not doing anything. I'm not giving a zoom talk or writing a paper or book or whatever. But I'm also afraid of getting to that state. So what about you?
- [41:35]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
Yeah, well, I would think that you should be able to do that anytime. I think that that is a great goal for all of us. Again, but the plant sounds great. The planful mind.
- [41:45]
Dr. Christoph Koch
But then you actually have to do it for you and that's more challenging. Oh my God, I'm not gonna do anything today. How does it make me feel and look?
- [41:54]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
Yeah, I think for me, I think a lot about wanting to be in a state where I'm closer to nature and particularly animals. I have this dream to swim next to a whale. Like so this is like this. And I don't think that will ever happen in my lifetime. So I think that I think of myself as diving into the water. I have this image of complete freedom. I could swim with dolphins. It's true. I could probably make. But that would be in a. Like a closed. I think in the big ocean.
- [42:27]
Dr. Christoph Koch
What about sleeping next to a big dog? That's all of the equivalent.
- [42:31]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
No, no, no, it's more about the water for me. So I do have this vision in my mind that's like I love water and I feel completely free when I dive into the water. And so I would love. That's what I think about. I would love to be in that space one day where I jump off a boat and I'm swimming with a whale.
- [42:47]
Elizabeth Koch
I love that. I would like to be able to be more comfortable with letting go of control. And it's, you know, it's something I want to work towards where, because I always feel like I'm more comfortable when I'm in control of things. And I don't like surprises. I don't like not knowing. And I just. It's hard. It's easy for me to let go in certain contexts. Like if I'm painting or in a flow state or whatever, then I can let go. But, like, letting go in, like, the external world scares me, so I want to work toward that.
- [43:22]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
You're a Parker, too.
- [43:24]
Elizabeth Koch
Yeah. And I'm really good at parallel parking.
- [43:26]
Dr. Layla Devaucci
Yeah, exactly. It's so good that people clap.
- [43:29]
Elizabeth Koch
Yes. So, yeah, I want to be able to figure out how to let go of control a little bit more. Well, I want to thank you, Layla, for a wonderful conversation and for joining us us today. And if you'd like to learn more about your own perception box, spend some time this week answering the same perception box questions that we asked our guest. And check out other questions on our website@ unlikelycollaborators.com you can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and watch the show or listen wherever you get your podcasts. This has been science, A perception box created by unlikely collaborators in partnership with Pot People. I'm Dr. Heather Berlin.
- [44:13]
Dr. Christoph Koch
And I'm Dr. Christoph Koch. Thank you very much.