We see the past. Always.
By: Dr.Jai Chatha
Tags: Brain, Cognition, Neural Networks, Neuroscience

The law of solipsism states that we cannot be sure of the existence of things outside of our mind. As our experience is derived from our mind, that encompasses all that is there in life. This may all be an illusory simulation, a universe created by a young alien sitting in another dimension plugging away at a device able to create such a relatively incomprehensible mess. For the alien, it may just be a throwaway hobby or even a toy gimmick, much like a Tamagotchi, being nothing more than a conversation piece with his (not assuming, just making it easier) alien friends all having their own little universes they can tweak, heal, destroy, etc. My meta-hypothesis, though undeveloped, tries to explain the emergence of our experience in a few steps.

First Step: Input information. Sensory organs gather information about the environment around us (eyes, ears, etc.). Neurons inside our body also do the same every where they are sensing. This information, in the form of action potentials (ions moving down the axon) goes to the brain into the same regions that they always do, since neurons are stationary and planted in the same areas as they always are.

Second Step: Interpretation: After the information has reached the brain, it is released out of the neuron through its synaptic cleft (the border or No Mans Land between neurons) situated at the end of the neuron, aptly named the axon terminal and the beginning of the next neuron (dendrites). These dendrites are so numerous that we can’t possibly now where the signal information will end up. However, there may be many dendrites from different neurons so the pathway taken may change. OR the post-synaptic(next neuron in the chain) neuron may be decided by the type of information passed on. We’ll get into more of this in a separate article. This action potential or information is passed the same way onto the next few or even hundreds of neurons. The collection of this small neural network is able to interpret whatever is happening.

Third Step: Life as we know it: The life that we all experience is in essence, away from reality itself. We are not really viewing the world out of our eyes and seeing what is in front of us. We are viewing life through a lens, which is formed by the different neural networks firing at the same time. There is some form of central processing unit (atleast there must be) that tabulates all the different neural networks formed, and stitches them together to form on all-encompassing montage, or in our case non-stop video. The speed at which we see this occur, can be our perception of time.

My hypothesis: We are seeing the past. When all this sensory information has to be inputed, processed and interpreted into some form of understandable movie, the time it takes for it cannot possibly be perceived by us, since we don’t exist in that. We only exist when the experience has been stitched together ready for us to live in. Therefore, we are seeing the past happen as a wholly encompassed experience that includes everything we know about ourselves, personality, individuality, the environment in front of us, various neural networks that maintain our emotional state, etc. This time lag, is incomprehensible to us, as it is running on another timeline that doesn’t exist in our reality. How often this happens, is also another story. Maybe some experiences don’t take that long to tabulate and organize and may take shorter spurts of neuronal activity, hence making it quicker to form. This time may be 5minutes in our experiential time, or even a few hours or if we want to romanticize it, a whole lifetime.