Showing papers on "Time perception published in 2004"
TL;DR: The core neuroanatomical substrates of timing behavior are defined, including pre–supplementary motor area and right frontal operculum, and increasing attention to color selectively increased activity in area V4.
Abstract: Attention modulates our subjective perception of time. The less we attend to an event's duration, the shorter it seems to last. Attention to time or color stimulus attributes was modulated parametrically in an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Linear increases in task performance were accompanied by corresponding increases in brain activity. Increasing attention to time selectively increased activity in a corticostriatal network, including pre-supplementary motor area and right frontal operculum. Increasing attention to color selectively increased activity in area V4. By identifying areas whose activity was specifically modulated by attention to time, we have defined the core neuroanatomical substrates of timing behavior.
620 citations
TL;DR: There is a dissociation between the effects of OFC damage which does not affect this measure of spatial working memory but does affect impulsive and inappropriate behaviour, reversal, personality, time perception and emotion; and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex damage which is impaired in that they repeatedly returned to previously chosen empty locations ('within errors'), whereas OFC patients were not impaired on this measure.
Abstract: Damage to the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in humans has been associated with disinhibited or socially inappropriate behaviour and emotional changes. Some of the changes may be related to difficulty in responding correctly to rewards and punishers, in that these patients have difficulty in learning to correct their choice of a visual stimulus when it is no longer associated with reward. We extend this fundamental approach by investigating the relationship between frontal dysfunction and impulsive behaviour, the behavioural, emotional and personality changes seen in patients with prefrontal cortex damage, and thus in addition illuminate the cognitive and biological processes that are impaired in impulsive people. OFC patients (n = 23) performed more impulsively on both self-report and cognitive/behavioural tests of impulsivity, reported more inappropriate 'frontal' behaviours, and performed worse on a stimulus-reinforcement association reversal task, than non-OFC prefrontal cortex lesion control (n = 20) and normal control (n = 39) participants. Further, OFC patients experienced more subjective anger than non-OFC and normal participants, and less subjective happiness than normals; and had a faster subjective sense of time (overestimated and underproduced time intervals) than normal controls, while non-OFC patients did not differ from normals. Finally, both OFC and non-OFC patients were less open to experience than normal participants. There were no differences between OFC patients, non-OFC lesion patients and normal controls on all other personality traits, most notably extraversion. In a spatial working memory task, the non-OFC group, most of whom had dorsolateral prefrontal cortex lesions, were impaired in that they repeatedly returned to previously chosen empty locations ('within errors'), whereas OFC patients were not impaired on this measure. Thus there is a dissociation between the effects of OFC damage which does not affect this measure of spatial working memory but does affect impulsive and inappropriate behaviour, reversal, personality, time perception and emotion; and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex damage which does affect this measure of spatial working memory, but not impulsive and inappropriate behaviour, reversal, personality, time perception and emotion. The effects of OFC damage on impulsive and related behaviours described here have implications for understanding impulsive behaviour.
549 citations
TL;DR: The results support the view that attentional orienting underlies distortions in perceived duration, and show that TSE in the visual domain can occur because of semantic novelty, rather than image novelty per se.
Abstract: During brief, dangerous events, such as car accidents and robberies, many people report that events seem to pass in slow motion, as if time had slowed down. We have measured a similar, although less dramatic, effect in response to unexpected, nonthreatening events. We attribute the subjective expansion of time to the engagement of attention and its influence on the amount of perceptual information processed. We term the effect time's subjective expansion (TSE) and examine here the objective temporal dynamics of these distortions. When a series of stimuli are shown in succession, the low-probability oddball stimulus in the series tends to last subjectively longer than the high-probability stimulus even when they last the same objective duration. In particular, (1) there is a latency of at least 120 msec between stimulus onset and the onset of TSE, which may be preceded by subjective temporal contraction; (2) there is a peak in TSE at which subjective time is particularly distorted at a latency of 225 msec after stimulus onset; and (3) the temporal dynamics of TSE are approximately the same in the visual and the auditory domains. Two control experiments (in which the methods of magnitude estimation and stimulus reproduction were used) replicated the temporal dynamics of TSE revealed by the method of constant stimuli, although the initial peak was not apparent with these methods. In addition, a third, control experiment (in which the method of single stimuli was used) showed that TSE in the visual domain can occur because of semantic novelty, rather than image novelty per se. Overall, the results support the view that attentional orienting underlies distortions in perceived duration.
429 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, participants were trained on a temporal bisection task in which visual stimuli (a pink oval) of 400 ms and 1600 ms served as short and long standards, respectively.
Abstract: Participants were trained on a temporal bisection task in which visual stimuli (a pink oval) of 400 ms and 1600 ms served as short and long standards, respectively. They were then presented comparison durations between 400 ms and 1600 ms, represented by faces expressing three emotions (anger, happiness, and sadness) and a neutral‐baseline facial expression. Relative to the neutral face, the proportion of long responses was higher, the psychophysical functions shifted to the left, and the bisection point values were lower for faces expressing any of the three emotions. These findings indicate that the duration of emotional faces was systematically overestimated compared to neural ones. Furthermore, consistent with arousal‐based models of time perception, temporal overestimation for the emotional faces increased with the duration values. It appears, therefore, that emotional faces increased the speed of the pacemaker of the internal clock.
310 citations
TL;DR: Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to differentiate neural systems involved in formulating representations of time from processes associated with making decisions about their duration and to support the independence of systems that mediate interval encoding and decision processes.
202 citations
TL;DR: Significant activation of pre-SMA and anterior cingulate was found to be specific to the TD task, which suggests that these two frontal regions may play a role in the temporal processing of somatosensory events.
Abstract: Two identical stimuli, such as a pair of electrical shocks to the skin, are readily perceived as two separate events in time provided the interval between them is sufficiently long. However, as they are presented progressively closer together, there comes a point when the two separate stimuli are perceived as a single stimulus. Damage to posterior parietal cortex, peri-supplementary motor area (peri-SMA), and basal ganglia can disturb this form of temporal discrimination. Our aim was to establish, in healthy subjects, the brain areas that are involved in this process. During functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning, paired electrical pulses, separated by variable inter-stimulus intervals (5-110 msec), were delivered to different sites on one forearm (8-64 mm from the midline). Subjects were required to simply detect the stimulus (control task) or to identify a stimulus property. For temporal discrimination (TD), subjects reported whether they felt one or two stimuli. For spatial discrimination, they reported whether the stimuli were located on the right or left side of the forearm. Subjects reported their choice by pressing a button with the opposite hand. Our results showed that discrimination, as opposed to simply detection, activated several brain areas. Most were common to both discrimination tasks. These included regions of prefrontal cortex, right postcentral gyrus and inferior parietal lobule, basal ganglia, and cerebellum. However, activation of pre-SMA and anterior cingulate was found to be specific to the TD task. This suggests that these two frontal regions may play a role in the temporal processing of somatosensory events.
190 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: The review shows that the same brain regions are involved in both motor timing and time estimation, suggesting that both functions are probably inseparable and mediated by common neural networks.
Abstract: Cognitive time management is an important aspect of human behaviour and cognition that has so far been understudied. Functional imaging studies in recent years have tried to identify the neural correlates of several timing functions, ranging from simple motor tapping to higher cognitive time estimation functions. Several regions of the frontal lobes, in particular dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), inferior prefrontal cortex (IFC), anterior cingulate gyrus (ACG) and the supplementary motor area (SMA), alongside non-frontal brain regions such as the inferior parietal lobes, the cerebellum and the basal ganglia have been found to be involved in tasks of motor timing and time estimation. In this paper we review and discuss the involvement of these brain regions in different tasks of cognitive time management, illustrating it with own findings on motor timing and time perception tasks using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The review shows that the same brain regions are involved in both motor timing and time estimation, suggesting that both functions are probably inseparable and mediated by common neural networks.
177 citations
TL;DR: These results, combined with other peak-interval procedure data from drug and lesion studies in animals as well as behavioral results in human patient populations with striatal damage, support the involvement of frontal-striatal circuitry in human interval timing.
171 citations
TL;DR: It is found that children with autism are unable to link their responses to stimulus duration, and this results demonstrate important deficits in duration judgment in individuals with autism.
Abstract: It is well known that complex functions (e.g. perception, attention, memory, emotions, social interactions and language) are usually disturbed in autism. As these functions are characterized by specific temporal patterns, the present study examined whether children with autism show typical temporal processing in the time domain of a few seconds. Using a temporal-reproduction paradigm, we found that they were unable to link their responses to stimulus duration. Independently of stimulus duration, they reproduced auditory or visual stimuli with the same response duration of, on average, 3 s. These results demonstrate important deficits in duration judgment in individuals with autism. As other experiments provide evidence for a temporal processing platform of approximately 2-3 s in normal individuals, this platform may be preserved in a residual form in autism.
144 citations
TL;DR: The study provides support for the context-memory hypothesis by demonstrating that patients with schizophrenia show a fundamental deficit in binding contextual cues together to form a coherent representation of an event in memory.
137 citations
TL;DR: The results suggest that deficits in the perception of cues important for speech rhythm may be universal in developmental dyslexia.
Abstract: Recent research has suggested a novel link between deficits in the perception of cues relevant to speech rhythm (i.e., deficits in amplitude envelope rise time processing, or beat perception) and the phonological deficits seen in most dyslexic children. In this research, we investigated whether these beat perception deficits were specific to a stress-timed language, such as English, or whether they would generalize to languages with different rhythmic properties, such as French. Eighteen dyslexics, 18 reading level controls, and 20 chronological age controls were tested on a battery of phonological tasks, reading tasks and psychoacoustic tests. The results suggest that deficits in the perception of cues important for speech rhythm may be universal in developmental dyslexia.
Journal Article•
TL;DR: The time perception mechanism in anticipatory timing control was investigated in a synchronization tapping task and it was thought to be a dual process including the attention processing of temporal information and the embodied automatic anticipation.
Abstract: The time perception mechanism in anticipatory timing control was investigated in a synchronization tapping task An especially negative asynchrony phenomenon in which the tap onset precedes the stimulus onset was used as an anticipatory response In this experiment, to clarify the effects of higher brain functions, such as attention, a dual-task method was applied and a word memory task was used as a secondary task The results revealed two types of anticipatory mechanisms from the standpoint of attentional resources involved in time perception One is the anticipatory tapping that is influenced by attention and seen in the interstimulus-onset interval (ISI) range of 1 800 to 3 600 ms In this region, the magnitude of synchronization error (SE) between tap onset and stimulus onset was scaled by the ISI The other is the automatic anticipation that is not affected by attention and is seen in the 450 to 1 500 ms range SE in this region was constant and independent of the ISI Accordingly, this anticipatory timing mechanism in synchronous tapping is thought to be a dual process including the attention processing of temporal information and the embodied automatic anticipation
Journal Article•
TL;DR: A series of studies aimed at characterizing the relationships between duration judgments and slowing down of the internal clock, attention and memory deficits clarify the respective weight of processing speed, Attention and memory in both tasks, and allow better insight into the theoretical models of psychological time.
Abstract: We report a series of studies aimed at characterizing the relationships between duration judgments and slowing down of the internal clock, attention and memory deficits. Different groups of participants (elderly people, patients with Parkinson's disease, patients with severe traumatic brain injury, and patients with temporal lobe lesions) performed a duration reproduction task and a duration production task in two conditions: a control counting condition and a concurrent reading condition. Participants were also administered reaction time tasks, tapping tasks, and a battery of attention and memory tests. The results allow us to characterize the relationships between cognitive deficits and impaired duration reproductions and productions in each group. Moreover, results as a whole clarify the respective weight of processing speed, attention and memory in both tasks, and allow better insight into the theoretical models of psychological time.
TL;DR: The 5–year–olds judged visual stimuli as more variable than auditory ones, indicating that their temporal sensitivity was lower in the visual than in the auditory modality, and a theoretical model suggested that this modality effect was due to differences in the pacemaker speed of the internal clock.
Abstract: This experiment investigated the effect of modality on temporal discrimination in children aged 5 and 8 years and adults using a bisection task with visual and auditory stimuli ranging from 200 to 800 ms. In the first session, participants were required to compare stimulus durations with standard durations presented in the same modality (within-modality session), and in the second session in different modalities (cross-modal session). Psychophysical functions were orderly in all age groups, with the proportion of long responses (judgement that a duration was more similar to the long than to the short standard) increasing with the stimulus duration, although functions were flatter in the 5-year-olds than in the 8-year-olds and adults. Auditory stimuli were judged to be longer than visual stimuli in all age groups. The statistical results and a theoretical model suggested that this modality effect was due to differences in the pacemaker speed of the internal clock. The 5-year-olds also judged visual stimuli as more variable than auditory ones, indicating that their temporal sensitivity was lower in the visual than in the auditory modality.
TL;DR: Findings from a brain-imaging study show that activity in a network of motor-related areas varies parametrically with attention to time, suggesting that a system in which timing is important (but not the primary function) is recruited when temporal judgements are required.
TL;DR: The present results suggest that automatic duration discrimination in audition operates even for durations of the order of seconds; yet its optimum time scale might be of the orders of milliseconds.
Abstract: Time perception in everyday life deals with various intervals. Here we investigated whether an automatic durationdiscrimination mechanism in audition operates even for intervals of an order of seconds, by using the mismatch negativity (MMN), an index of automatic change detection in audition. In Experiment 1, occasional decrements of the duration of a repetitive ‘‘standard’’ tone elicited an MMN in subjects ignoring auditory stimulation, even with the standard-stimulus durations over a second. Nevertheless, the MMN amplitude was significantly diminished with standard-stimulus durations of 800 ms and above, despite the fact that a constant deviant versus standard duration ratio was used. Complementary experiments varying the interstimulus interval (Experiment 2) and the magnitude of duration change (Experiment 3) yielded corroborating results. The present results suggest that automatic duration discrimination in audition operates even for durations of the order of seconds; yet its optimum time scale might be of the order of milliseconds.
TL;DR: EEG and MEG scalp data were simultaneously recorded while human participants were performing a duration discrimination task in visual and auditory modality, separately, and the involvement of frontal and parietal cerebral cortex in human timing was demonstrated.
TL;DR: Patients with schizophrenia were impaired on a duration identification task and a probed-recall memory task but not on a line-length identification task, suggesting some aspect of temporal information processing is indeed disturbed in schizophrenia.
Abstract: Patients with schizophrenia display numerous cognitive deficits, including problems in working memory, time estimation, and absolute identification of stimuli. Research in these fields has traditionally been conducted independently. We examined these cognitive processes using tasks that are structurally similar and that yield rich error data. Relative to healthy control participants (n = 20), patients with schizophrenia (n = 20) were impaired on a duration identification task and a probed-recall memory task but not on a line-length identification task. These findings do not support the notion of a global impairment in absolute identification in schizophrenia. However, the authors suggest that some aspect of temporal information processing is indeed disturbed in schizophrenia.
TL;DR: The results suggest that these tests are potentially a useful tool to measure subjective perception of time and corroborate the hypothesis of a change in subjective time perception with aging.
Abstract: Studies concerning time perception lack a validated assessment tool and a consensual "gold-standard" measure. Moreover, the present evidence suggests modification of timing with aging. This study aimed to develop and validate a neuropsychological tool to measure time perception and to study temporal perception with aging. Eighty-six healthy participants, aged 15-90 years old, were asked to verbally estimate and produce empty intervals signaled by auditory beeps, of 7-, 32-, and 58-s duration. Two tests were used as "gold-standards": estimation of the duration of time necessary to draw a clock ("clock time") and estimation of the duration of neuropsychological evaluation ("global time"). Results showed a correlation between estimation and production (p < .01) and a correlation between estimation or production and "global time" (p < .01). The correlation between either estimation or production and age (p < .01), suggested a faster "internal-clock" in the older participants. However, this finding lost significance when controlled for literacy. The results suggest that these tests are potentially a useful tool to measure subjective perception of time. They also corroborate the hypothesis of a change in subjective time perception with aging. It was not possible to conclude if this effect was a specific result of aging or biased by the interference of literacy.
TL;DR: Judgment of durations in children with ADHD and age- and gender-matched control subjects is examined and suggests that there is a deficiency in the utilization of temporal information in ADHD (possibly secondary to deficits in working memory and/or strategy utilization), rather than a problem involving a central timing mechanism.
Abstract: Clinicians, parents, and teachers alike have noted that individuals with ADHD often have difficulties with "time management," which has led some to suggest a primary deficit in time perception in ADHD. Previous studies have implicated the basal ganglia, cerebellum, and frontal lobes in time estimation and production, with each region purported to make different contributions to the processing and utilization of temporal information. Given the observed involvement of the frontal-subcortical networks in ADHD, we examined judgment of durations in children with ADHD (N = 27) and age- and gender-matched control subjects (N = 15). Two judgment tasks were administered: short duration (550 ms) and long duration (4 s). The two groups did not differ significantly in their judgments of short interval durations; however, subjects with ADHD performed more poorly when making judgments involving long intervals. The groups also did not differ on a judgment-of-pitch task, ruling out a generalized deficit in auditory discrimination. Selective impairment in making judgments involving long intervals is consistent with performance by patients with frontal lobe lesions and suggests that there is a deficiency in the utilization of temporal information in ADHD (possibly secondary to deficits in working memory and/or strategy utilization), rather than a problem involving a central timing mechanism.
TL;DR: The authors found significant improvement in time processing induced by rTMS when trains were applied over the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) but not over the supplementary motor area, suggesting that the circuit involving the basal ganglia and the DLPFC might constitute the neural network subserving time perception.
Abstract: Patients with Parkinson disease (PD) are impaired in time processing. The authors investigated the effects of high-frequency (5 Hz) repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in patients with PD performing a time reproduction task. The authors found significant improvement in time processing induced by rTMS when trains were applied over the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) but not over the supplementary motor area, suggesting that the circuit involving the basal ganglia and the DLPFC might constitute the neural network subserving time perception.
TL;DR: Results showed that an attentionally demanding conjunction search task produced a large underestimation of time, and as the engagement of attention increased so did the underestimating of time.
TL;DR: The data support the perceptual hypothesis that different sources of sensory input mediate timing under task and no-task conditions and show a decrease in perceived duration under concurrent task conditions, in accord with attentional resource allocation models of timing.
Abstract: Prospective time estimates were obtained from human subjects for stimulus durations ranging from 2 to 23 sec. Presence and absence of a concurrent nontemporal task was manipulated within subjects in three experiments. In addition, location of the task within temporal reproduction trials and psychophysical method were varied between groups in Experiments 2 and 3, respectively. For long-duration stimuli, the results of all three experiments conformed to results in the literature, showing a decrease in perceived duration under concurrent task conditions, in accord with attentional resource allocation models of timing. The effects of task location and psychophysical method on time estimates were also compatible with this analysis. However, psychophysical functions obtained under task conditions were fit well by power functions, an outcome that would not be anticipated on the basis of attention theory. The slopes of the functions under no-task conditions were steeper than those under task conditions. The data support the perceptual hypothesis that different sources of sensory input mediate timing under task and no-task conditions.
TL;DR: Results indicated that the chronostasis effect is constant across a wide range of stimulus durations and does not reflect the pattern of visual stimulation experienced during a saccade, suggesting that arousal is not critical.
TL;DR: Evidence for developmental changes in memory distortion was found in the temporal generalization task of Experiment 3, in which stimuli were spaced logarithmically rather than linearly, and a similar distortion pattern was absent in a task in which children made judgments about the pitch rather than the duration of stimuli, suggesting the effect may be specific to time estimation.
TL;DR: It is suggested that chronostasis is triggered by a low-level signal arising in response to efferent signals generated in the superior colliculus, which is common to all the conditions tested and their respective neural circuits.
Abstract: Saccadic chronostasis refers to the subjective temporal lengthening of the first visual stimulus perceived after an eye movement, and is most commonly experienced as the ''stopped clock'' illusion. Other temporal illusions arising in the context of movement (e.g., ''intentional binding'') appear to depend upon the volitional nature of the preceding motor act. Here we assess chronostasis across different saccade types, ranging from highly volitional (self-timed saccades, antisaccades) to highly reflexive (peripherally cued saccades, express saccades). Chronostasis was similar in magnitude across all these conditions, despite wide variations in their neural bases. The illusion must therefore be triggered by a ''lowest common denominator'' signal common to all the conditions tested and their respective neural circuits. Specifically, it is suggested that chronostasis is triggered by a low-level signal arising in response to efferent signals generated in the superior colliculus.
TL;DR: Evidence is provided that right temporal-parietal damage produces a processing refractory period for stimuli in contralesional space that extends in both space and time and is in agreement with other studies that suggest that the right temporal -parietal cortex is important in integrating the where and when of stimuli.
TL;DR: The overall findings indicate that the reported deficit in time perception among individuals with ADHD may be restricted to tasks that involve response inhibition, reaction time, and/or motor movements (e.g., replicate durations of stimuli by pressing a lever).
Abstract: This study investigated temporal processing abilities, hemispheric asymmetry, interhemispheric transfer, and stimulant medication effects in adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Pairs of light emitting diodes in a visual half-field display (i.e., bilateral and unilateral presentations) were presented to examine medication effects, temporal judgments, hemispheric asymmetry, and interhemispheric transfer in male adolescents with ADHD and matched controls on age and gender. Participants responded (YES/NO) whether pairs of spatially separated diodes were illuminated simultaneously. Stimulant medication did not have an affect on temporal judgments, hemispheric equivalence, or interhemispheric transfer. No group differences in temporal judgments in any of the paired conditions were revealed. Both the ADHD and control groups demonstrated hemispheric equivalence for temporal judgments. Unexpectedly, the ADHD group demonstrated significantly faster interhemispheric transfer times when compared to the control group. The overall findings indicate that the reported deficit in time perception among individuals with ADHD may be restricted to tasks that involve response inhibition, reaction time, and/or motor movements (e.g., replicate durations of stimuli by pressing a lever).
TL;DR: There was no significant effect of presence versus absence of the concurrent memory task on time estimates; however, time estimates were shorter when participants were instructed to focus on memory versus timing, and support for a contextual-change model of timing was obtained.