While technically manufactured clocks display time continuously across many scales – from milliseconds to the calendar year – biological clocks tick differently. There are many different types, each of which displays time very specifically only at certain scales. Neuroscientist Dean Buonomano speaks of a „different-clocks-for-different-time-scales strategy“ in the evolution of the brain: „Even the simplest of digital wristwatches can accurately measure hundredths of a second, seconds, minutes, hours, days, and months. In the brain, however, the neural circuits responsible for timing Beethoven’s Fifth have no hour hand, and the circuits that govern our sleep-wake cycle have no second hand.“

Literature:

Buonomano, Dean (2017), Your Brain is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time.

Further Reading:

Dean Buonomano (Time Thinkers)

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