Perception of time

I was talking to a friend of mine about the deaths of the people this year- people like Cohen and Micheals and Prince and we both realized we had drastically different senses of time. I know time itself is really a mostly man-invented concept. But the perception of it is not. It may originate within us, but we created the idea of hours and days in response to what we sensed, did we not?

What I'm wondering is, and maybe one of ya'll has a good book or article recommendation, how does our perception of the passage of time work? Is it purely the firing of neurons as we process what the world offers to our senses? Or is there something inherent in our minds that sets how we experience time?

My experience of time is that it goes to fast for me. Days feel more like hours and years like months. I have often said I need a 36 hour day. Her experience of time is very different. To her it seems like it takes much longer. She thought Spock had died further back then last year, for example. What creates these differences? While I agree that fun generally seems to go by faster than not fun stuff- what my friend and I were discussing was a little more pervasive than a situational perception. It's almost as though our body clocks run at completely different speeds. I'm just really curious about this. Thoughts?

Here's a start:

The Secret Life of Time

I have read several books on time and the measurement of same -- the historical development of calendars and clocks are fascinating subjects in-and-of-themselves -- but I've never heard of a book specifically on the perception of time.

On my reading shelf right now is "Time Travel" by James Gleick, the guy who wrote the great "Chaos" book a few years back. In this one he explores the concept of time travel in fiction, from H.G. Wells to Woody Allen. He explores the paradoxes and conundrums such a nonlinear ability would give us. But that's not what you asked.

AFAIK the perception of time is a function of how busy the brain is, and how much sleep a person gets in between. The first ten years of my daughter's life are a black hole in my memory, and seemed to go by in a couple of months. OTOH weeks months years when I was single and unemployed and moneyless are laid out like elaborate Proustian novels in my brain, with hours seeming like days and months like years. I have been brought up short, many times, trying to gauge when things happened during my life because it hasn't moved at a uniform pace.

Just my 2¢.