This article explores how the human brain constructs the sense of time and space from the perspective of cognitive psychology, including how people build and organize an understanding of time and space through perception and memory. It draws on theoretical models, experimental research, and relevant psychological mechanisms, and explains how these abilities influence our cognition and behavior.
The cognitive map hypothesis suggests that the brain constructs a unified spatial representation of the environment for use in memory and action planning. Animal studies have found place cells in the hippocampus that fire when an animal reaches a specific location, and grid cells in the entorhinal cortex that fire in a hexagonal grid pattern across space. Together, these cells encode distances, directions, and environmental boundaries.
Recent human neuroimaging studies show that the human hippocampus and entorhinal cortex also support map-like spatial encoding, while regions like the parahippocampal gyrus and posterior cingulate cortex link these maps to stable landmarks. This spatial schema allows flexible navigation: for example, research has found that London taxi drivers who practice memorizing streets over many years show significantly increased volume in the right posterior hippocampus, which correlates with their ability to construct allocentric (external reference) maps.
Overall, the brain uses the hippocampal system and associated navigation networks to construct and maintain multidimensional spatial cognitive structures that support functions such as localization and path planning.
Humans often represent time in spatial terms. The mental timeline is a common phenomenon: people conceptualize past and future along a spatial line—e.g., with the past on the left and the future on the right. Cultural differences exist: English speakers typically use left-right or front-back metaphors, while Mandarin speakers often use up-down or front-back distinctions. Experiments show that when presented with “past” words, participants tend to respond faster with the left hand, while “future” words prompt quicker right-hand responses.
Beyond cultural variation, the brain’s representation of time is also developmental: preschoolers may initially use egocentric bidirectional timelines to represent event order, then gradually acquire the concept of absolute time.
In the brain, there are also neural mechanisms specifically for encoding time. In the hippocampus, time cells fire sequentially at different moments of an experience, encoding time much like place cells encode space. These time cells do not depend on the animal’s physical movement but rather represent the passage of time within memory. The coexistence of time and place cells in the hippocampus shows that it encodes both spatial and temporal information, helping organize experience into coherent memories.
Classic models of time perception include the pacemaker–accumulator and scalar timing theories. These propose an internal “clock” mechanism: a pacemaker emits pulses at a fixed rate, which are counted by an accumulator to represent perceived time. Reference memory stores pulse counts to estimate duration. While this model explains many timing behaviors, it has been criticized for lacking neurophysiological grounding.
Thus, later models such as the Striatal Beat Frequency model link the internal clock to the striatum and dopaminergic circuits. Another model, the attentional gate model, suggests that focused attention allows more pulses to pass through the gate into the accumulator, while distraction reduces perceived duration. Experiments show that when participants are asked to focus on time beforehand, they estimate durations as longer; when recalling time after the fact, they tend to underestimate due to attention being diverted.
The event-based theory emphasizes the central role of events and changes in temporal perception. As early as 1890, William James noted that more events during an interval make it feel longer in retrospect. Modern research confirms that subjective duration often correlates with the number of perceived events or changes: during equal objective time intervals, more frequent changes result in longer time estimates.
According to Event Segmentation Theory, the brain divides continuous experience into discrete events with defined beginnings and ends, forming the fundamental units of temporal perception.
External sensory conditions, attention distribution, and memory content can all distort our subjective experience of time and space.
In time perception, dynamic or high-brightness stimuli tend to be overestimated in duration. Visual features such as color, size, and distance also affect judgments of duration. Emotional state is a major factor: “time flies when you’re having fun” or drags when bored or in pain. The attention model explains this: positive experiences divert attention away from time, speeding up subjective time, while high-arousal negative events speed up the internal clock, making time feel slower.
Memory also influences time perception: retrospective time estimates depend on the number and richness of remembered events—the more stored events, the longer the perceived duration.
In spatial perception, attention and context play important roles. For instance, noticing distant landmarks or using multimodal cues (e.g., visual and proprioceptive) enhances navigation accuracy; distractions or sparse signals lead to disorientation or misjudged distances.
Experimental studies of time perception use various tasks: time discrimination (comparing two intervals), time production or reproduction (generating a specific duration), and time estimation (recalling duration of past experiences). Anticipatory and retrospective paradigms help explore the roles of attention and memory.
Neuroimaging techniques such as ERP and fMRI have identified brain areas involved in timing, including the anterior cingulate cortex, striatum, and thalamus.
For spatial perception and navigation, common research methods include virtual reality (VR) navigation tasks, maze-solving, mental rotation, and perspective transformation tests. In these tasks, participants recall paths or judge object locations. Imaging reveals activity in the hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, parietal cortex, and others.
Some modern studies use lifelogging devices to track participants’ daily paths, then test recall in the lab. These studies show that activity patterns in the left anterior hippocampus reflect temporal and spatial proximity of recalled events. Such methods combine behavioral and neural data to deepen understanding of how time and space perception are formed.
In daily life, our sense of time and space underpins a range of behaviors and cognitive processes.
Navigation and spatial memory: When planning routes, people rely on mental maps. Learning new environments or complex networks requires hippocampal involvement. As mentioned, professional taxi drivers exhibit measurable hippocampal changes due to intense map learning.
Episodic memory: Everyday experiences include when and where events occurred. The hippocampus binds temporal details with spatial contexts, allowing us to recall events using spatiotemporal cues.
Language and temporal metaphors: Language frequently uses spatial metaphors to describe time. For example, Chinese uses “前” (before) and “後” (after) to denote past and future, respectively, while English uses terms like “ahead” and “behind.” This reflects our tendency to use familiar spatial concepts to understand abstract temporal ideas. Though metaphors vary by culture, the intertwining of time and space cognition is universal.
In summary, through various neural coding systems and cognitive representations, the brain continuously integrates spatiotemporal information, enabling accurate perception and use of time and space in everyday life.
This article is based on empirical studies in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, drawing on numerous research findings, including those published in leading academic journals.