Temporal dysfunction in traumatic brain injury patients: primary or secondary impairment?

Abstract

Adequate temporal abilities are required for most daily activities. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients often present with cognitive dysfunctions, but few studies have investigated temporal impairments associated with TBI. The aim of the present work is to review the existing literature on temporal abilities in TBI patients. Particular attention is given to the involvement of higher cognitive processes in temporal processing in order to determine if any temporal dysfunction observed in TBI patients is due to the disruption of an internal clock or to the dysfunction of general cognitive processes. The results showed that temporal dysfunctions in TBI patients are related to the deficits in cognitive functions involved in temporal processing rather than to a specific impairment of the internal clock. In fact, temporal dysfunctions are observed when the length of temporal intervals exceeds the working memory span or when the temporal tasks require high cognitive functions to be performed. The consistent higher temporal variability observed in TBI patients is a sign of impaired frontally mediated cognitive functions involved in time perception.

The delayed reproduction of long time intervals defined by innocuous thermal sensation

“…This implies that the segmentation based solely on stimulus-driven bottom-up processes is insufficient to produce the longer duration effect. This may suggest a contribution of executive processes to duration estimation (e.g., Brown 1997Brown , 2006Brown et al 2013Brown et al , 2015Mioni et al 2014;Ogden et al 2011Ogden et al , 2014. One possible explanation is that the increased attention to the changes in sensory intensity required in the dynamic conditions reinforced the segmentation process (e.g., through top-down enhancement of sensory contrasts), leading to longer duration judgments.…”

Methodological Issues in the Study of Prospective Timing

“…2 sd = standard deviation. Grondin, & Stablum, 2014a;Mioni, Stablum, Prunetti, & Grondin, 2016b) and it has been explained as a manifestation of difficulties in maintaining a stable representation of duration. This difficulty is accentuated in patients due to attentional, working memory, and executive dysfunction, and could be viewed as a manifestation of failure to fully attend to temporal information (Cester et al, 2017;Jones & Jahanshahi, 2014;Mioni, Grondin, & Stablum, 2014a;Mioni, Stablum, Prunetti, & Grondin, 2016b).…”

“…Temporal Range Regarding the temporal range, a general tendency in timing literature, mainly in neuroscience researchers, is to emphasize a distinction between intervals above and below 1s, which is based on differential pharmacological effects (Rammsayer, 2008) and on patient studies with various cases of brain damage (see Allman & Meck, 2012;Meck, 2005;Mioni, Grondin, & Stablum, 2014a;Piras et al, 2014). Moreover, researchers claim that the processing of smaller intervals is more sensory-based or benefits from some automatic processing, whereas the processing of longer intervals requires the support of cognitive resources (also see Lewis & Miall, 2003;Mioni, Stablum, & Grondin, 2014b).…”

Duration and numerical estimation in right brain‐damaged patients with and without neglect: Lack of support for a mental time line

“…Thus, patients suffering from a general deficit of basic cognitive functions such as working memory, sustained attention, or executive functions would show an underestimation pattern in duration tasks irrespective of the presence of neglect. This is corroborated by the observation of weakened duration performance of non‐neglect patients with a right hemispheric lesion (Calabria et al ., ; Danckert et al ., ; Harrington, Haaland, & Knight, ) and by the existence of significant correlations between altered perception of duration in severe traumatic brain injury patients and deficits in attention, working memory, and executive functions (Mioni, Mattalia, & Stablum, ; Mioni, Stablum, McClintock, & Cantagallo, ; Perbal, Couillet, Azouvi, & Pouthas, ; for a review, see Mioni, Grondin, & Stablum, ).…”