The passage of time has fascinated the human mind for millennia. Tools for measuring time emerged early in civilization: lunar calendars appear in the archeological record as far back as 10 000 years ago and water clocks some 6000 years ago. Later technological innovations such as mechanical clocks, and more recently atomic clocks, have allowed the tracking of time with ever-increasing precision. And yet, arguably, the most sophisticated ‘time piece’ is the brain. Our brains can not only track the duration and succession of events, but they can also coordinate complex motor movements at striking levels of precision; communicate effectively by generating and interpreting sounds and speech; determine how to maximize rewards over time in the face of uncertainty; reflect upon the past; plan for the future; respond to temporal regularities and irregularities in the environment; and adapt to change in temporal scales that range from millisecond resolution up to evolutionary processes spanning millions of years.

中文翻译：

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你的思想，你的大脑和时间

几千年来，时间的流逝一直让人们着迷。测量时间的工具出现在文明早期：早在 10 000 年前，考古记录中就出现了农历，而在大约 6000 年前出现了水钟。后来的技术创新，如机械钟和最近的原子钟，使得时间跟踪的精度越来越高。然而，可以说，最复杂的“时间片”是大脑。我们的大脑不仅可以跟踪事件的持续时间和连续性，还可以以惊人的精确度协调复杂的运动；通过产生和解释声音和语音进行有效沟通；确定如何在面临不确定性的情况下随着时间的推移最大化奖励；回顾过去；规划未来；对环境中的时间规律和不规律做出反应；并适应时间尺度的变化，从毫秒级分辨率到跨越数百万年的进化过程。