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IMAGE: SMG showing a decrease in activity after duration adaptation (left). Correlation between the magnitude of the time warp and the change in SMG activity (right). see plus
Credit: Hayashi and Ivry, JNeurosci 2020.
Some days, time flies by, while others seem to drag on. A new study of JNeurosci reveals why: Time-sensitive neurons wear out and skew our perceptions of time.
Neurons in the supramarginal gyrus (SMG) fire in response to a specific period of time. If you are repeatedly exposed to a stimulus of a certain duration, neurons fatigue. Since other neurons continue to fire normally, our subjective perception of time becomes skewed.
Hayashi and Ivry measured brain activity with fMRI while human participants participated in a time comparison task. The healthy adult participants viewed a visual adapter (a gray circle) for a set period of time, 30 times in a row. After this adaptation period, they were shown a test stimulus and its duration was indicated. If the duration of the adapter was long, the participants underestimated the time; if the adapter life was short, they overestimated the time. Activity in the SMG decreased when the adapter and the test stimulus were similar in length, indicating neuronal fatigue. The degree of time perception biased was correlated with how much activity in the SMG decreased: greater fatigue led to greater time distortion.
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Manuscript title: Duration selectivity in the right parietal cortex reflects the subjective experience of time
About JNeurosci
JNeurosci, the first journal of the Society for Neuroscience, was launched in 1981 as a means of communicating the highest quality neuroscience research results to the growing field. Today, the journal remains committed to publishing cutting-edge neuroscience that will have immediate and lasting scientific impact, while responding to the changing publishing needs of authors, representing the breadth of the field and the diversity in the field. authorship.
About the Society for Neurosciences
The Society for Neuroscience is the world’s largest organization of scientists and physicians dedicated to understanding the brain and nervous system. The nonprofit organization, founded in 1969, now has nearly 37,000 members in more than 90 countries and more than 130 chapters around the world.
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