0000000000004721
AUTHOR
Carmelo M. Vicario
Timing flickers across sensory modalities
In tasks requiring a comparison of the duration of a reference and a test visual cue, the spatial position of test cue is likely to be implicitly coded, providing a form of a congruency effect or introducing a response bias according to the environmental scale or its vectorial reference. The precise mechanism generating these perceptual shifts in subjective duration is not understood, although several studies suggest that spatial attentional factors may play a critical role. Here we use a duration comparison task within and across sensory modalities to examine if temporal performance is also modulated when people are exposed to spatial distractors involving different sensory modalities. Di…
Time processing in children with Tourette's syndrome.
Background: Tourette syndrome (TS) is characterized by dysfunctional connectivity between prefrontal cortex and sub-cortical structures, and altered meso-cortical and/or meso-striatal dopamine release. Since time processing is also regulated by fronto-striatal circuits and modulated by dopaminergic transmission, we hypothesized that time processing is abnormal in TS. Methods: We compared time processing abilities between nine children with TS-only (i.e. without major psychiatric comorbidities) and 10 age-matched healthy children, employing a time reproduction task in which subjects actively reproduce different temporal intervals, and a time comparison task in which subjects judge whether a …
Optokinetic stimulation affects temporal estimation in healthy humans
The representation of time and space are closely linked in the cognitive system. Optokinetic stimulation modulates spatial attention in healthy subjects and patients with spatial neglect. In order to evaluate whether optokinetic stimulation could influence time perception, a group of healthy subjects performed "time-comparison" tasks of sub- and supra-second intervals before and after leftward or rightward optokinetic stimulation. Subjective time perception was biased by the direction of optokinetic stimulation. Rightward optokinetic stimulation induced an overestimation of time perception compared with baseline and leftward optokinetic stimulation. These results indicate a directional bias…
Perceiving numbers alters time perception.
The representation of time, space and numbers are strictly linked in the primate's cognitive system. Here we show that merely looking at number symbols biases a temporal judgment on their duration depending upon the number's magnitude. In a first experiment, a group of healthy subjects was submitted to a time estimation task, requiring to judge whether the duration of a test stimulus was longer or shorter than that of a previous reference fixed stimulus (digit 5; duration 300 ms). Test stimuli were the digits 1, 5 and 9 ranging between 250 and 350 ms. The main results showed that temporal perception was biased according to the magnitude expressed by the digit: low digits (i.e. 1) leading to…
RELATIVISTIC COMPRESSION AND EXPANSION OF EXPERIENTIAL TIME IN THE LEFT AND RIGHT SPACE
Time, space and numbers are closely linked in the physical world. However, the relativistic-like effects on time perception of spatial and magnitude factors remain poorly investigated. Here we wanted to investigate whether duration judgments of digit visual stimuli are biased depending on the side of space where the stimuli are presented and on the magnitude of the stimulus itself. Different groups of healthy subjects performed duration judgment tasks on various types of visual stimuli. In the first two experiments visual stimuli were constituted by digit pairs (1 and 9), presented in the centre of the screen or in the right and left space. In a third experiment visual stimuli were constitu…
Motor and linguistic linking of space and time in the cerebellum
Background: Recent literature documented the presence of spatial-temporal interactions in the human brain. The aim of the present study was to verify whether representation of past and future is also mapped onto spatial representations and whether the cerebellum may be a neural substrate for linking space and time in the linguistic domain. We asked whether processing of the tense of a verb is influenced by the space where response takes place and by the semantics of the verb. Principal Findings: Responses to past tense were facilitated in the left space while responses to future tense were facilitated in the right space. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) of the right cereb…
Temporal abnormalities in children with developmental dyscalculia.
Recent imaging studies have associated Developmental dyscalculia (DD) to structural and functional alterations corresponding Parietal and the Prefrontal cortex (PFC). Since these areas were shown also to be involved in timing abilities, we hypothesized that time processing is abnormal in DD. We compared time processing abilities between 10 children with pure DD (8 years old) and 11 age-matched healthy children. Results show that the DD group underestimated duration of a sub-second scale when asked to perform a time comparison task. The timing abnormality observed in our DD participants is consistent with evidence of a shared fronto-parietal neural network for representing time and quantity.…
Reward and punishment: investigating cortico-bulbar excitability to disclose the value of goods
A continuing challenge for neuroscientists is to develop new conceptual tools and methodologies for understanding, predicting and modelling the influences of rewarding/punishing outcomes on human behaviour and decision making. Reinforcement shapes behaviours from the most primitive (fight/flight, ingest/regurgitate, approach/avoid) to complex (buy/sell). Understanding the neural processes underlying reinforcement is critical for understanding economic and social decision-making. Moreover, comprehension of deranged processing and responses to reinforcing stimuli is crucial across a range of psychology fields and society as a whole, including psychiatric and neurological illness, eating disor…