How the motor system both encodes and influences our sense of time

Abstract

Several lines of evidence suggest that motoric brain structures may form the core amodal component of a neural network supporting a wide range of timed behaviours. Here, we review recent findings which elucidate the neural computations that occur within motor regions, and in particular the supplementary motor area, in order to support precisely timed actions. Although motor activity may help us represent time, it is also clear that action both enriches and complicates the interpretation of sensory inputs. Hence, in the second half of this review, we also consider the latest findings regarding the perceptual distortions that our actions can impose upon the subjective timeline.3

Predictive rhythmic tapping to isochronous and tempo changing metronomes in the nonhuman primate

“…Furthermore, beat entrainment in humans is more accurate and precise with auditory than visual metronomes . In this respect, the GAE also suggests that beat‐based timing in humans is a neurocognitive phenomenon that depends on a dynamic interaction between auditory and motor systems in the brain . The idea is that the bidirectional bottom‐up and top‐down interactions between the auditory and motor areas in the brain, including the motor cortico–basal ganglia–thalamo‐cortical circuit, is quite developed and efficient in humans .…”

“…The “vocal learning and rhythmic synchronization” (VLRS) hypothesis proposes that predictive and tempo‐flexible entrainment to an auditory beat is restricted to vocal‐learning species and resulted from the specialization of auditory and motor neural circuitry for vocal learning or vocal motor control . The stronger coupling between audiomotor areas would also explain the auditory superiority in beat entrainment in humans . However, a recent study showed that a California sea lion, a poor vocal learner, can entrain its head bobbing to complex musical stimuli and generalize this skill to a range of novel tempos, challenging the VLRS hypothesis …”

Neural correlates of time distortion in a preaction period

“…To this end, we started our analyses by searching for neural correlates of this effect (Figure ). The first candidate was medial premotor (Crowe, Zarco, Bartolo, & Merchant, ; Merchant, Perez, Zarco, & Gamez, ) or the supplementary motor cortex (SMA) (Coull, Vidal, & Burle, ; Schwartze, Rothermich, & Kotz, ), a core region of the cortico‐thalamic‐basal ganglia circuit (Akkal, Dum, & Strick, ) for time perception (Merchant & Yarrow, ). This region is known to show a “temporal accumulator” activity that slowly grows up as a function of an elapsed time from a stimulus onset (Elbert et al, ; Merchant et al, ; Parker et al, ).…”

On the biological basis of musicality

“…Beat‐based timing in humans is a complex neurocognitive phenomenon that depends on a dynamic interaction between auditory and motor systems in the brain . This dynamic interaction is hypothesized to be facilitated by bidirectional and potentially causal links between the auditory and motor areas in the brain (Fig.…”

“…34 Beat-based timing in humans is a complex neurocognitive phenomenon that depends on a dynamic interaction between auditory and motor systems in the brain. [35][36][37][38][39] This dynamic interaction is hypothesized to be facilitated by bidirectional and potentially causal links between the auditory and motor areas in the brain (Fig. 2), including the motor cortico-basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical (mCBGT) circuit, that appear to be more developed in humans compared with nonhuman primates and related species.…”