Your Brain is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time

by Dean Buonomano

Consciousness is a delayed account of not only what is happening in the external world, but of what is happening in the unconscious brain. For example, as we will see (chapter 12), by watching the neural activity within the brain it is possible to predict when people will voluntarily decide to move their finger up to 900 milliseconds before they actually do—hundreds of milliseconds before the subjects themselves seem to be aware of having “freely” decided to move their finger. So even if danger does kick the brain into an overclocking mode—resulting in sped-up actions—consciousness might be too slow to be guiding those actions. Thus the reports of “dominant mental quickness as demonstrated by the increased speed of thoughts”29 may just be another deception the unconscious brain imposes on the mind.