Cognitive Aging and Time Perception: Roles of Bayesian Optimization and Degeneracy

Abstract

This review outlines the basic psychological and neurobiological processes associated with age-related distortions in timing and time perception in the hundredths of milliseconds-to-minutes range. The difficulty in separating indirect effects of impairments in attention and memory from direct effects on timing mechanisms is addressed. The main premise is that normal aging is commonly associated with increased noise and temporal uncertainty as a result of impairments in attention and memory as well as the possible reduction in the accuracy and precision of a central timing mechanism supported by dopamine-glutamate interactions in cortico-striatal circuits. Pertinent to these findings, potential interventions that may reduce the likelihood of observing age-related declines in timing are discussed. Bayesian optimization models are able to account for the adaptive changes observed in time perception by assuming that older adults are more likely to base their temporal judgments on statistical inferences derived from multiple trials than on a single trial’s clock reading, which is more susceptible to distortion. We propose that the timing functions assigned to the age-sensitive fronto-striatal network can be subserved by other neural networks typically associated with finely-tuned perceptuo-motor adjustments, through degeneracy principles (different structures serving a common function).

“Walking” through the sensory, cognitive, and temporal degradations of healthy aging

“…The principal behavioral predictions of this perspective are more variable as well as delayed timed responses when the information used as the reference by the participants was encoded with a higher clock speed (e.g., verbally tagged durations, the quantity that hearing “5 s” activates). An alternative approach suggests that age‐related alterations in timing performance are simply the manifestations of changes in the general cognitive functions (e.g., attention) due to the dependencies of temporal information processing on multitude of information‐processing components (scalar timing theory) . For instance, reduced attention to time would also lead to more variable timed responses as well as biases in the timing of responses, the direction of which would depend on the differential manipulation of the attentional load during encoding (training) versus decoding (testing) of durations…”

“…Furthermore, neurobiological and neuroanatomical changes that accompany healthy aging also provide clear reasons to expect age‐dependent alterations in interval timing . Both the dopaminergic function and the cortico‐striato‐thalamic loop that have been consistently implicated in interval timing are also typically disrupted in aging .…”

“…The same rationale applies to the effects that would emerge if aging was associated with lower attention to time due to more limited cognitive resources . More appropriate methods for detecting the accuracy and imprecision signatures of a slower clock are verbal estimation tasks, production tasks, and unpaced finger tapping tasks, which presumably reflect the internal tempo in its pure form . Thus, for brevity, we will focus primarily on those studies that utilized these more appropriate behavioral methods.…”

Error monitoring in decision‐making and timing is disrupted in autism spectrum disorder

“…To assess the potentially different temporal information processing of individuals with ASD, we also utilized an independent timing task (self‐paced finger tapping) that required participants to keep a stable rhythm at a pace comfortable to them. This task was chosen as it has been shown to capture the expected age‐related differences in temporal information processing, presumably because of being less open to the influence of compensatory mechanisms given its simplicity [Turgeon et al, ; ; Vanneste et al, ; for a review see Paraskevoudi, Balcı & Vatakis, ].…”

The effect of cognitive training on the subjective perception of well-being in older adults

“…Even normally aging older adults experience significant impairment in attentional tasks (Getzmann, Golob & Wascher, 2016; Sperduti, Makowski & Piolino, 2016), episodic memory (Manenti et al, 2016; Tromp et al, 2015) and working memory tasks (Jost et al, 2011; Ko et al, 2014), time perception (Turgeon, Lustig & Meck, 2016) and also speed of processing (Ball et al, 2013; Elgamal, Roy & Sharratt, 2011). If poorly prevented, these impairments might degrade the quality of life as well as the psychological well-being (Pusswald et al, 2015; Stogmann et al, 2015).…”