Wrinkles in subsecond time perception are synchronized to the heart

Abstract

The role of the heart in the experience of time has been long theorized but empirical evidence is scarce. Here we examined the interaction between fine-grained cardiac dynamics and the momentary experience of subsecond intervals. Participants performed a temporal bisection task for brief tones (80-188 ms) synchronized with the heart. We developed a cardiac Drift-Diffusion Model (cDDM) that embedded contemporaneous heart rate dynamics into the temporal decision model. Results revealed the existence of temporal wrinkles -dilation or contraction of short intervals -in synchrony with cardiac dynamics. A lower pre-stimulus heart rate was associated with an initial bias in encoding the millisecond-level stimulus duration as longer, consistent with facilitation of sensory intake. Concurrently, a higher pre-stimulus heart rate aided more consistent and faster temporal judgments through more efficient evidence accumulation. Additionally, a higher speed of post-stimulus cardiac deceleration, a bodily marker of attention, was associated with a greater accumulation of sensory temporal evidence in the cDDM. These findings suggest a unique role of cardiac dynamics in the momentary experience of time. Our cDDM framework opens a new methodological avenue for investigating the role of the heart in time perception and perceptual judgment.

Training interoceptive awareness with real-time haptic vs. visual heartbeat feedback

“…With respect to emotion, it has been tied to social cognition, affective regulation and emotional processing (Dobrushina, Dobrynina, et al, 2020; Gao et al, 2019; Terasawa et al, 2013; Zaki et al, 2012). In the cognitive domain, interoception has been correlated with self-consciousness, perception of time, memory, decision making, among other cognitive processes (Sadeghi et al, 2023; Tsakiris & Critchley, 2016; N. S. Werner et al, 2009).…”

“…With respect to emotion, it has been tied to social cognition, affective regulation and emotional processing Gao et al, 2019;Terasawa et al, 2013;Zaki et al, 2012). In the cognitive domain, interoception has been correlated with self-consciousness, perception of time, memory, decision making, among other cognitive processes (Sadeghi et al, 2023;Tsakiris & Critchley, 2016; N. S. Werner et al, 2009). Interoception is also becoming ever more significant in the realm of mental health, as abnormal or reduced interoceptive processing is associated with various neurological and psychological conditions and exacerbations of their symptoms (Bonaz et al, 2021;Brewer et al, 2021;Nord & Garfinkel, 2022), among them depression and anxiety (Paulus & Stein, 2010), eating disorders (Khalsa et al, 2022), Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders Sun et al, 2022).…”

When the heart meets the mind Exploring the brain-heart interaction during time perception

“…Cardiac periods increased, and skin-conductance levels decreased steadily in the range of several seconds in the auditory [17] and visual modalities [18] during the encoding and the reproduction phases of the timing task. Similarly, duration timing in the millisecond time range has been shown to be influenced by the participants' beat-by-beat cardiac dynamics [19,20].…”