I am a cognitive（认知的） neuroscientist, and I'm trying to understand how we perceive（察觉） time, and how our perception（理解感知） of time arises（出现） from the workings（工作） of our brain. Why? Why do I want to understand that? Well, time is the ultimate（最后的） master（主人） of our lives. We are all constantly（不断地） faced with its fleeting（ 短暂的） nature. Yet, how we feel the passing of time can be highly malleable（有延展性的）.

  When we are bored, in pain, but also when we encounter（遭遇） something novel（新奇的） or extraordinary（非凡的）, time feels to be passing much slower than when we are busy or simply having fun. But what does it mean to feel time? And why does the feeling of time distort（扭曲）, depending on the situation, our level of focus, our emotional（感情的） state? Do these distortions（ 扭曲） serve some function? And can we gain（获得） some level of control over how we feel time? These are very big questions, and we do not have the answer to any of them, not just yet.

  But I will tell you about a surprising discovery I believe will take us a step closer to unlocking（开启） the neural basis of time. And I will show you that time is not something that is created solely（单独地） by the brain, but it is also intimately（密切地） shaped（形成） by what is happening inside the rest of the body. I work in the lab of action and body at Royal Holloway University of London, where and in our lab, we look at the brain from an embodied（具体表达） point of view. What this means is that we believe we cannot fully（充分地） understand the workings（工作） of the brain if we take it out of the body, because after all, the main reason for us to have a brain is to keep the body alive so that we can act in the world. And for that, it is not enough for the brain to perceive what is happening in the world around us, but it also needs to perceive what is happening inside of our own body. It needs to understand what our body needs at any moment in time.

  That additional（附加的） internal（内的） sense, the perception of the body from within, is called interoception. And one example of interoception is the perception of our own heart. Yes, the heart. I think all of us know that the main function of the heart is to transport oxygen-rich blood all through the body. And like other bodily functions, it is controlled by the brain. So when I want to move, the heart should start beating faster to provide more oxygen.

  When I need to slow down and focus, it will also slow down to preserve（保护） the oxygen. But what many of you may not know is that the activity of the heart itself shapes the activity of the brain.