Human thought is highly flexible, achieved by evolving patterns of brain activity across groups of cells. Neuroscience aims to understand cognition in the brain by analysing these intricate patterns. We argue that this goal is impeded by the time format of our data—clock time. The brain is a system with its own dynamics and regime of time, with no intrinsic concern for the human-invented second. Here, we present the Brain Time Toolbox, a software library that retunes electrophysiology data in line with oscillations that orchestrate neural patterns of cognition. These oscillations continually slow down, speed up and undergo abrupt changes, introducing a disharmony between the brain’s internal regime and clock time. The toolbox overcomes this disharmony by warping the data to the dynamics of coordinating oscillations, setting oscillatory cycles as the data’s new time axis. This enables the study of neural patterns as they unfold in the brain, aiding neuroscientific enquiry into dynamic cognition. In support of this, we demonstrate that the toolbox can reveal results that are absent in a default clock time format.

人类思维是高度灵活的，这是通过跨细胞群进化大脑活动模式来实现的。神经科学旨在通过分析这些复杂的模式来理解大脑中的认知。我们认为，这一目标受到我们数据的时间格式——时钟时间的阻碍。大脑是一个具有自己的动态和时间机制的系统，对人类发明的秒没有内在的关注。在这里，我们展示了 Brain Time Toolbox，这是一个软件库，可以根据协调认知神经模式的振荡来重新调整电生理学数据。这些振荡不断地减慢、加速并经历突然的变化，导致大脑内部机制和时钟时间之间的不协调。工具箱通过将数据扭曲到协调振荡的动态来克服这种不和谐，将振荡周期设置为数据的新时间轴。这使得研究大脑中展开的神经模式成为可能，有助于神经科学对动态认知的探究。为了支持这一点，我们证明该工具箱可以显示默认时钟时间格式中不存在的结果。