The inner sense of time: how the brain creates a representation of duration

Wittmann, Marc

doi:10.1038/nrn3452

Cited by 293 publications

(263 citation statements)

References 91 publications

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“…Previous accounts of interval timing proposed that the brain contains a neural timer that resets to zero by the occurrence of reinforcement (Gallistel and Gibbon, 2000;Gibbon, 1977) and that dopamine is critically involved in second-to-second estimation Buhusi and Meck, 2005;Coull et al, 2010;Coull et al, 2012;Matell and Meck, 2000;Meck et al, 2008;Narayanan et al, 2012;Wittmann, 2013). Consistent with this theory, we observed a decrease in subsecond dopamine concentrations throughout the interval of an FI task that resets after each reinforcement-evoked dopamine event.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Cannabinoid Receptor Activation Shifts Temporally Engendered Patterns of Dopamine Release

Oleson

Cachope

Fitoussi

et al. 2013

Neuropsychopharmacol

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The ability to discern temporally pertinent environmental events is essential for the generation of adaptive behavior in conventional tasks, and our overall survival. Cannabinoids are thought to disrupt temporally controlled behaviors by interfering with dedicated brain timing networks. Cannabinoids also increase dopamine release within the mesolimbic system, a neural pathway generally implicated in timing behavior. Timing can be assessed using fixed-interval (FI) schedules, which reinforce behavior on the basis of time. To date, it remains unknown how cannabinoids modulate dopamine release when responding under FI conditions, and for that matter, how subsecond dopamine release is related to time in these tasks. In the present study, we hypothesized that cannabinoids would accelerate timing behavior in an FI task while concurrently augmenting a temporally relevant pattern of dopamine release. To assess this possibility, we measured subsecond dopamine concentrations in the nucleus accumbens while mice responded for food under the influence of the cannabinoid agonist WIN 55 212-2 in an FI task. Our data reveal that accumbal dopamine concentrations decrease proportionally to interval duration-suggesting that dopamine encodes time in FI tasks. We further demonstrate that WIN 55 212-2 dose-dependently increases dopamine release and accelerates a temporal behavioral response pattern in a CB1 receptor-dependent manner-suggesting that cannabinoid receptor activation modifies timing behavior, in part, by augmenting time-engendered patterns of dopamine release. Additional investigation uncovered a specific role for endogenous cannabinoid tone in timing behavior, as elevations in 2-arachidonoylglycerol, but not anandamide, significantly accelerated the temporal response pattern in a manner akin to WIN 55 212-2.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Cannabinoid Receptor Activation Shifts Temporally Engendered Patterns of Dopamine Release

Oleson

Cachope

Fitoussi

et al. 2013

Neuropsychopharmacol

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“…While dedicated neural structures for time perception have been described (Buhusi and Meck, 2005;Coull et al, 2004;Harrington et al, 1998;Ivry and Schlerf, 2008;Morillon et al, 2009;Treisman et al, 1990;van Wassenhove, 2009;Wittmann, 2009Wittmann, , 2013, the encoding of sensory event timing has been proposed to result from the intrinsic dynamics of neural populations not necessarily dedicated to temporal processing (Johnston and Nishida, 2001;Karmarkar and Buonomano, 2007;van Wassenhove, 2009). For instance, the timing of a colored visual patch could be encoded in the dynamics of the neural population dedicated to the analysis of color (Karmarkar and Buonomano, 2007;Moutoussis and Zeki, 1997).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Encoding of event timing in the phase of neural oscillations

2014

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a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f oTime perception is a critical component of conscious experience. To be in synchrony with the environment, the brain must deal not only with differences in the speed of light and sound but also with its computational and neural transmission delays. Here, we asked whether the brain could actively compensate for temporal delays by changing its processing time. Specifically, can changes in neural timing or in the phase of neural oscillation index perceived timing? For this, a lag-adaptation paradigm was used to manipulate participants' perceived audiovisual (AV) simultaneity of events while they were recorded with magnetoencephalography (MEG). Desynchronized AV stimuli were presented rhythmically to elicit a robust 1 Hz frequency-tagging of auditory and visual cortical responses. As participants' perception of AV simultaneity shifted, systematic changes in the phase of entrained neural oscillations were observed. This suggests that neural entrainment is not a passive response and that the entrained neural oscillation shifts in time. Crucially, our results indicate that shifts in neural timing in auditory cortices linearly map participants' perceived AV simultaneity. To our knowledge, these results provide the first mechanistic evidence for active neural compensation in the encoding of sensory event timing in support of the emergence of time awareness.

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“…Experimental and theoretical work on mental time travel has led to better understanding of how time is represented conceptually (Roberts, 2008;Wittmann, 2013). Ye and Song (OR) report that in contrast to adults, the prospective bias in children seems to be unrelated to current task demands.…”

Section: Conceptual Timementioning

confidence: 99%

The long and short of mental time travel-- self-projection over time-scales large and small

2015

Frontiers Research Topics

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This Research Topic is about time-experience broadly construed, as it manifests at perceptual and conceptual time-scales (milliseconds-to-seconds vs. longer times, respectively). Authors representing a broad spectrum of psychology and neuroscience have contributed, introducing novel theories, empirical findings, and methodological innovations. In this Editorial we give a thematic overview of the exciting and diverse contents of this Research Topic. ConsciousnessMany contributors acknowledged that the experience of time is an irreducible part of conscious experience, strongly related to the experience of being a self (Wittmann et al., 2015). Zhou, Pöppel, and Bao (P) integrate different aspects of temporal experience into a unified biologicallygrounded framework held together by the concepts of identity and homeostasis. Berkovich-Ohana and colleagues (H&T) locate representations of minimal self and extended self within a threedimensional consciousness state-space defined by time, awareness, and emotion. Fingelkurts and Fingelkurts (O) link phenomenology to neural activation patterns, which in turn are constrained by bodily space and the larger context, in order to construct the temporal dimensions of past, future, and present. Martin and colleagues (H&T) consider how disturbances of the minimal self in patients with schizophrenia are possibly related to alterations in temporal processing typically associated with this disorder. In order to better illuminate how creative insight is subjectively experienced, with special attention to its temporal aspects, Cosmelli and colleagues (P) recommend neurophenomenological methodologies, integrating cognitive neuroscience with descriptive, first-person data. Multiple-ScalesMany contributors addressed how time is represented at multiple scales. Wackermann (O) grounds the experience of time in a knowing, willing subject, exploring how subjective horizons determined by human biological constraints impose various preconditions on the "notion and knowledge of time" across multiple scales. Singularly, Bonato and colleagues (O) propose that temporal cognitions respecting events occurring at vastly different time-scales, such as interval timing vs. mental time travel, are nonetheless represented by a common spatial metric (Bonato et al., 2012).

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The inner sense of time: how the brain creates a representation of duration

Cited by 293 publications

References 91 publications

Cannabinoid Receptor Activation Shifts Temporally Engendered Patterns of Dopamine Release

Cannabinoid Receptor Activation Shifts Temporally Engendered Patterns of Dopamine Release

Encoding of event timing in the phase of neural oscillations

The long and short of mental time travel-- self-projection over time-scales large and small

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