{"id":236479,"date":"2026-05-04T22:07:50","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T03:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/the-brain-may-use-dopamine-to-bend-time-and-shape-memory"},"modified":"2026-05-04T22:07:50","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T03:07:50","slug":"the-brain-may-use-dopamine-to-bend-time-and-shape-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/the-brain-may-use-dopamine-to-bend-time-and-shape-memory","title":{"rendered":"The brain may use dopamine to bend time and shape memory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-brain-may-use-dopamine-to-bend-time-and-shape-memory2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Ever heard of getting a \u201cdopamine hit\u201d from something you enjoy? These exciting moments also appear to influence memory, although perhaps not in the way you\u2019d expect.<\/p>\n<p>New research by UCLA psychologists suggests your brain may use dopamine to distort and expand time between distinct events, separating the flow of experience into pieces that can be flexibly reconstructed in the future.<\/p>\n<p>The study, published in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-026-69950-8\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Nature Communications<\/i>,<\/a> found that a key dopamine-producing area of the brain\u2014the ventral tegmental area\u2014was activated when volunteers participating in an MRI scan detected the start of a new event. Importantly, when this dopamine hub was strongly activated, people reported more time had passed. The researchers also found that when people blinked more during a new event\u2014an action thought to be related to dopamine signaling\u2014their memory for time once again expanded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ever heard of getting a \u201cdopamine hit\u201d from something you enjoy? These exciting moments also appear to influence memory, although perhaps not in the way you\u2019d expect. New research by UCLA psychologists suggests your brain may use dopamine to distort and expand time between distinct events, separating the flow of experience into pieces that can [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236479\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}