Time perception

Previous work has suggested that our perception of time is plastic and dependent on the distance of the stimulus to our body. For example, Annelli et al (2015) showed that stimuli presented in peri-personal and far space are judged differently and that this distance-effect on time perception can be shaped by training participants with a tool that effectively extends the reachable space. We here aimed to replicate and extend these results using a paradigm in which we tested time perception at multiple distances from the body prior to and following active tool-use training. In two experiments, w

Aim: Time perception isn't solely bound to current moments; instead, past experiences can significantly shape present perception. While prior studies sought neural evidence for past events' impact on perceived current duration (e.g., Cheng et al. 2023) , a clear neural mechanism underlying serial dependence and individual differences remains elusive. This study investigates individual variations in serial dependence, providing neural evidence for such distinctions.Methods: EEG signals were recorded during a duration reproduction task. Subjects (n=48, 23 female) experienced a duration (1, 1.5,

Time perception can be distorted by factors such as arousal, attention or emotions. Recently, it has been demonstrated that stimulation of the vestibular system causes a contraction of subjective time (1). Conversely, the greater the amplitude of a whole-body rotation, the longer it seems to last, i.e. it causes a dilation of subjective time (2).To resolve this apparent inconsistency, and to better understand mechanisms of time perception during whole-body rotations, we evaluated time reproduction (2 or 4 seconds) in static (shakes) vs. two rotatory conditions (40° and 80°).The perceived time

…In terms of time, editing techniques (e.g., elliptical, overlapping, or cut minimization) allow for the manipulation of the perceived duration of events as they unfold on screen. More specifically, a scene can be edited to be time compressed, expanded, or real-time in terms of its perceived duration. Despite the consistent application of these techniques in filmmaking, their perceptual outcomes have not been experimentally validated. Given that viewing a film is experienc

…therefore, a strong sense of time is necessary, otherwise, we would fail in many of our movement goals. Despite this intrinsic link between movement and timing, only recently has research begun to investigate the interaction. Two primary effects that have been observed include: movements biasing time estimates (i.e., affecting accuracy) as well as making time estimates more precise. The goal of this presentation is to review this literature, discuss a Bayesian cue combinati

An important ability for successful interaction with the environment is the estimation of magnitudes such as the duration of an event. To improve duration estimates, the brain must compensate for sensory uncertainty, which it does by encoding the statistical regularities that link co-occurring stimuli and tasks (i.e., temporal context). The entorhinal cortex (EC) supports the encoding of such task regularities, which has been suggested to rely on grid cells that the EC is known to harbor. On population level, grid cells exhibit a six-fold rotational symmetry as a function of gaze direction, wh

Decades of research have investigated the relationship between perception of time and heart rate with often mixed results. In search of such a relationship, I will present my far journey between two projects: from time perception in the realistic VR experience of crowded subway trips in the order of minutes (project 1); to the perceived duration of sub-second white noise tones (project 2). Heart rate had multiple concurrent relationships with subjective temporal distortions for the sub-second tones, while the effects were lacking or weak for the supra-minute subway trips. What does the heart h

Our perception of time isn’t like a clock; it varies depending on other aspects of experience, such as what we see and hear in that moment. However, in everyday life, the properties of these simple features can change frequently, presenting a challenge to understanding real-world time perception based on simple lab experiments. We developed a computational model of human time perception based on tracking changes in neural activity across brain regions involved in sensory processing, using fMRI. By measuring changes in brain activity patterns across these regions, our approach accommodates the

Research into pitch perception and time perception has typically treated the two as independent processes. However, previous studies of music and speech perception have suggested that pitch and timing information may be processed in an integrated manner, such that the pitch of an auditory stimulus can influence a person’s perception, expectation, and memory of its duration and tempo. Typically, higher-pitched sounds are perceived as faster and longer in duration than lower-pitched sounds with identical timing. We conducted a series of experiments to better understand the limits of this pitch-t

The way we represent and perceive time has crucial implications for studying temporality in conscious experience. Contrasting positions posit that temporal information is separately abstracted out like any other perceptual property, or that time is represented through representations having temporal properties themselves. To add to this debate, we investigated alterations in felt time in conditions where only conscious visual experience is altered while a bistable figure remains physically unchanged. In this talk, I will discuss two studies that we have done in relation to answering this quest

…to form an internal representation of time, and a threshold that determines when a target duration has elapsed. However, clear EEG manifestations of these abstract components have not yet been identified. We measured the EEG of subjects while they performed a temporal bisection task in which they were requested to categorize visual stimuli as short or long in duration. We report an ERP component whose amplitude depends monotonically on the stimulus duration. The relation of the ERP amplitude and stimulus

Animals possess the ability to effortlessly and precisely time their actions even though information received from the world is often ambiguous and is inadvertently transformed as it passes through the nervous system. With such uncertainty pervading through our nervous systems, we could expect that much of human and animal behavior relies on inference that incorporates an important additional source of information, prior knowledge of the environment. These concepts have long been studied under the framework of Bayesian inference with substantial corroboration over the last decade that human ti