#156 - Meet The Greatest Time Neuroscientist You’ve Never Heard Of

🧠 JOIN THE GIANT'S SHOULDER FAMILY Become a YouTube Member for exclusive episodes, early access + ad-free viewing 👇 https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder/join Dean Buonomano is a UCLA neuroscientist and one of the first researchers to ask how the brain encodes time. His work overturned a century-old assumption — that somewhere in your head sits a central clock — by showing that timing falls out of the dynamics of neural circuits themselves. He wrote the bestseller Your Brain Is a Time Machine, then took the argument to physics, co-authoring a paper with Carlo Rovelli on whether the past still exists. He is a presentist in a field that mostly isn't. Expect to learn: \- The clockless brain: why there is no central timer anywhere in your head \- Timing in a dish: how isolated brain tissue can be taught intervals \- Death and religion: how foresight forced our ancestors to invent the afterlife \- The ten-second test: the one simple thing no language model can do \- Pause the computer: the thought experiment that breaks state-based theories of consciousness SPONSORS Get Jenni Your Intelligent Research Assistant (GIANT20 for 20% off) - http://jenni.ai/?utm\_source=youtube&utm\_medium=inf&utm\_campaign=thegiantsshoulder GS EPISODES MENTIONED György Buzsáki - Meet the Neuroscientist Who Discovered That Waves Produce Memory, Spacetime and Consciousness: https://youtu.be/95FFRTIiLDY Joseph LeDoux - Meet The World's Greatest Emotion Neuroscientist You've Never Heard Of: https://youtu.be/u\_yCcxQsKn0 Michael Levin - Michael Levin: Bioelectricity, Morphogenesis, Platonic Spaces & Xenobots: https://youtu.be/LTBZRVKUwyM Michael Levin & Earl Miller - Meet the Scientist Showing Every Cell In Your Body is Conscious!: https://youtu.be/eNi-\_2cOVtc Anil Seth - No. 1 Consciousness Expert: Optical Illusions that Prove Reality is a Lie, Emotions, Books and AI!: https://youtu.be/lOSA06K0l1o GUEST LINKS UCLA Neurobiology Profile: https://neurobio.ucla.edu/people/dean-buonomano-phd Buonomano Lab: http://www.buonomanolab.com/ X: https://x.com/DeanBuono Bridging the Neuroscience and Physics of Time (with Carlo Rovelli): https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.01976 LISTEN ON YouTube - https://youtu.be/G2LaKtxUng0 Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249 SKOOL Want a full breakdown of your own conscious inner experience? Join the Giant's Shoulder community: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/about FOLLOW EVAN https://x.com/evan\_mcgl TIMESTAMPS 0:00:00 Trailer 0:02:01 The Brain Has No Central Clock 0:04:17 How Neural Population Clocks Work 0:05:40 Teaching Brain Tissue To Tell Time 0:06:57 Prediction Is Really About When 0:09:10 Even Bacteria Keep Time 0:10:27 Mental Time Travel Built Civilisation 0:11:39 Realising You'll Die Invented Religion 0:14:57 Squirrels Don't Actually Plan Ahead 0:18:19 Waking Up Before Your Alarm 0:23:29 Why Time Is Central To Consciousness 0:24:01 Block Universe vs Only Now 0:29:24 The Runner Who Lost Time 0:33:18 Why Marathons Destroy Time Perception 0:37:18 The Memories With No Timestamp 0:42:02 Your Brain Runs Many Clocks 0:43:31 AI Cannot Wait Ten Seconds 0:45:38 How Transformers Deleted Time 0:49:29 What If You Paused The Computer? 0:53:05 Could We Ever Build Conscious AI? 0:58:17 Arguing About Time With Carlo Rovelli 1:01:40 A Time Traveller Would Prove Me Wrong 1:07:05 You Can't Measure Time With Time 1:12:25 Which Theory Of Consciousness Is Right? 1:21:55 Why We Invented The Soul .....Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com