Brain activation patterns during measurement of sub- and supra-second intervals

Abstract

The possibility that different neural systems are used to measure temporal durations at the sub-second and several second ranges has been supported by pharmacological manipulation, psychophysics, and neural network modelling. Here, we add to this literature by using fMRI to isolate differences between the brain networks which measure 0.6 and 3 s in a temporal discrimination task with visual discrimination for control. We observe activity in bilateral insula and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and in right hemispheric pre-supplementary motor area, frontal pole, and inferior parietal cortex during measurement of both intervals, suggesting that these regions constitute a system used in temporal discrimination at both ranges. The frontal operculum, left cerebellar hemisphere and middle and superior temporal gyri, all show significantly greater activity during measurement of the shorter interval, supporting the hypotheses that the motor system is preferentially involved in the measurement of sub-second intervals, and that auditory imagery is preferentially used during measurement of the same. Only a few voxels, falling in the left posterior cingulate and inferior parietal lobe, are more active in the 3 s condition. Overall, this study shows that although many brain regions are used for the measurement of both sub-and supra-second temporal durations, there are also differences in activation patterns, suggesting that distinct components are used for the two durations.

The impact of a concurrent motor task on auditory and visual temporal discrimination tasks

“…The present findings also highlight the need for taking into consideration in further studies the differential effects across sensory modalities of attention modulation on temporal sensitivity. Our results are also in line with some neuroimaging evidence showing that different neural circuits are involved in processing sub-and suprasecond durations (Lewis & Miall, 2003;Tarantino et al, 2010).…”

Long-term music training tunes how the brain temporally binds signals from multiple senses

“…However, perhaps surprisingly, the asynchrony effects were consistently more pronounced in the left cerebellar hemisphere (i.e., ipsilateral to the premotor activation), although they were observed bilaterally at a lower statistical threshold of significance. This response profile might be explained by the specific role of the left cerebellum in temporal processing within the millisecond range, which is particularly relevant for audiovisual asynchrony detection in the current paradigm (17,18). Temporal processing along the motor hierarchy.…”

“…Indeed, this impression was statistically validated in a mixed design ANOVA of the integral with stimulus class (music vs. speech) as within-subject factor and group (musicians vs. nonmusicians) as between-subject factor, showing a main effect of group [F (1,35) (35) = 1.08, P = 0.14]. Furthermore, paired samples t tests comparing the temporal integration windows for speech and music in each group showed that musicians displayed a narrower temporal integration window for music relative to speech [t (18) = 4.29, P < 0.001], whereas the temporal integration windows for speech and music did not differ in nonmusicians [t (18) …”

Emergence of rhythm during motor learning

“…Automatic timing processes include performance of a well-learned rhythm [17], control of the acceleration and deceleration of a learned sequential hand movement [18], or synchronous tapping to the beat of a rhythm [19,20] especially as performed by professional musicians [8]. Controlled timing processes include encoding of time duration [21,22], explicit discrimination of time intervals [23], on-line adjustment of the timing of motor or cognitive action [19,24,25], or those in early phases of rhythm learning [26].…”