How does your body know what time it is? - Marco A. Sotomayor

Being able to sense time helps us do everything from waking and sleeping to knowing precisely when to catch a ball that’s hurtling towards us. And we owe all these abilities to an interconnected system of timekeepers in our brains. But how do they work? Marco A. Sotomayor details how human bodies naturally tell time.

Lesson by Marco A. Sotomayor, animation by TOGETHER.

[MAdhvaryu]

My body knew that it was time for a ted ed video so I'm here early

[larzsalas]

But how come when I take a long sleep in the afternoon I don't know what decade I'm in when I wake up.

[eatcarpet]

I don't know how he didn't get bored to death.

[simranrehal]

This narrator's voice is so nice, could listen to him all day :)

[j.rodolfoprz]

Well, it's 2 a.m. and my body doesn't understand I need to go to sleep right now in order to function tomorrow..

[geekfreak]

As a person with ADHD, I can confirm I experience time differently than my peers and coworkers. I'm notorious for misjudging how long or short a task will take, and we have timers to help keep not only me on track, but to benefit all of us when we get into flow or distracted. Time is standardized, but it's experience is not standard.

[toph]

What I find interesting is that most mornings, before I take a shower I start a timer for 13min20secs to tell me when to get out. Despite not having the same routine when I'm actually in the shower (taking more time washing my hair for example or simply enjoying the hot water) most of the time, I manage to leave the shower just a couple of seconds before the timer runs out. I get that intuition that it's time to get out and funnily enough, it is. That made me question the situation so I tried with different times like 15min or even 10 min and almost every time I managed to keep it really close to the set timer. I find it really fascinating.

[bhaktaskitchen]

The reason why I like TED Ed is that it has the answers to almost all of my silly questions

[HQ_Default]

I guess that explains why I ALWAYS wake up at 9 o'clock.

[miriamlogan]

"CLK." Scientists are *so* creative. Reminds me of the time engineers named a programming language "A, " and then the second version "B, " and the final version "C."

[DJization]

We need more people like Siffre willing to put themselves through this stuff.

[Brightrich]

This is why working from 9 P.m. to 6 A.m. fucks you up.

[K.S.Khunkhao]

Ted-ed vids always have epic - timeless - ending.

[livintolearn]

These lessons can really change anyone's life!!

[timetraveller]

What an amazing creation our bodies are!

[Ka-wsqj]

Honestly, my online classes are the only way I know what day and time it is. Otherwise I would sleep all day...

[retak]

I do not have this internal clock - I do not know when to eat or when to sleep - I gotta check the clock. And, I better do not mention catching the ball...

[RedwoodGeorge]

I used to work in radio and all of my breaks were programmed around (multiples of) 30 second advertisements. After a few months I would instinctively know how long 30 seconds was - down to about a second of accuracy. I could be totally engrossed in a conversation or surfing the web during an ad break when something in the back of my brain would say "time's up!" - and it was. That was a number of years ago and the 30 second timer has faded away but it was a fascinating phenomenon when it was around.

I am addicted to these videos.. These days I can’t sleep without watching one of TED...

[TheNoerdy]

How did he record when he ate and slept if he had no clock.