N1-P2: Neural markers of temporal expectation and response discrimination in interval timing

Abstract

Humans use temporal regularities in their daily life to act in accordance with future events in the most efficient way. To achieve this, humans build temporal expectations and determine a template action that is in line with those expectations. In this temporal trisection study, we aimed to study the neurophysiological counterparts of temporal expectation and response discrimination. We investigated amplitude variations of early event-related potentials (ERPs) while manipulating time intervals.We measured temporal expectation-related attenuation of neural activity and response discrimination processes in N1 and P2 ERP components. Results showed that the amplitude of the N1 component was attenuated for the predicted task-relevant temporal location of a response decision. The P2 amplitude, in contrast, was enhanced for a discriminated response in comparison to a template response. The present study supports a link between the different functional associations of the N1 and P2 components within the requirements of a timing task. N1-related amplitude modulation can determine a change in expectation level during timing. The amplitude regulation of the P2 component, in contrast, explains temporal discrimination in both expected and unexpected temporal locations. In addition to expectation-related modulation, our results suggest an additional regulation of the N1 amplitude that is linked to attention. The effect was observed in instances that included a prediction error of a task-relevant temporal location for a response decision. In conclusion, our study contributes to the growing neurocognitive literature on interval timing by capturing different aspects of a timing task; namely, N1-related expectation and P2-related response discrimination processes.

Auditory but Not Audiovisual Cues Lead to Higher Neural Sensitivity to the Statistical Regularities of an Unfamiliar Musical Style

“…Therefore, it is unexpected that the ERAN did not capture robustly the statistical learning process, and future studies are needed to investigate this further. In contrary, the N100 is more sensitive to local expectancy violation in various modalities, such as auditory, visual, temporal (Duzcu, Özkurt, Mapelli, & Hohenberger, 2019;Michalski, 2000). This component has been especially reflective of statistical learning, with larger N100 in response to tones with lower transitional probability compared to tones with higher probability (Abla et al, 2008;Moldwin, Schwartz, & Sussman, 2017;Paraskevopoulos et al, 2012;Zioga, Harrison, Pearce, Bhattacharya, & Luft, 2020).…”

One Tap at a Time: Correlating Sensorimotor Synchronization with Brain Signatures of Temporal Processing

“…2020 ), examining other temporal expectancy effects ( Schafer et al. 1981 ; Lange 2009 ; Todorovic and de Lange 2012 ), and investigating interval timing ( Kononowicz and van Rijn 2014 ; Duzcu 2019 ; Duzcu et al. 2019 ).…”

“…Electroencephalographic (EEG) experiments examining interval timing and rhythm suggest the N1-P2 complex to be a promising candidate due to its modulation by temporal expectancy ( Schafer et al. 1981 ; Lange 2009 ; Todorovic and de Lange 2012 ; Kononowicz and van Rijn 2014 ; Duzcu 2019 ; Duzcu et al. 2019 ; Menceloglu et al.…”