Moderate physical activity alters the estimation of time, but not space

Abstract

Moderate physical activity can influence cognitive functions and visual cortical activity. However, little is known about the effects of exercise on fundamental perceptual domains, such as spatial and temporal representation. Here we tackled this issue by testing the impact of physical activity on a temporal estimation task in a group of adult volunteers in three different conditions: (1) in a resting condition (baseline), (2) during moderate physical activity (cycling in place – PA), and (3) approximately 15 to 20 min following the physical activity phase, in which participants were seated and returned to a regular heart rate (POST). We show that physical activity specifically impacts time perception, inducing a consistent overestimation for durations in the range of milliseconds. Notably, the effect persisted in the POST session, ruling out the main contribution of either heart rate or cycling rhythmicity. In a control experiment, we found that spatial perception (distance estimation) was unaffected by physical activity, ruling out a major contribution of arousal and fatigue to the observed temporal distortion. We speculate that physical exercise might alter temporal estimation either by up-regulating the dopaminergic system or modulating GABAergic inhibition.

Similar effect of running on visual and auditory time perception in the ranges of milliseconds and seconds

“…Another factor we can reasonably exclude is heart rate modulation. The results, confirming previous evidence (Petrizzo et al, 2022;Tonelli et al, 2022) demonstrated that the heart rate acceleration from the resting state to the maximal effort during running was not predictive of the effect magnitude, across all the experimental conditions. Heart rate level has long been considered a reliable indicator of arousal (Thayer, 1970), both of which might influence the speed of the internal clock.…”

“…It is of interest to compare the present data also with the study by Tonelli et al (2022) investigating the effect of moderate cycling on visual time perception. The results, obtained with a reproduction paradigm, showed that while temporal distortions were qualitatively present across all the tested durations, they were statistically different from zero just in the milliseconds range (200 − 800 ms vs. 1.6 − 3.2 secs).…”

“…The results showed that, while cycling, perceived duration was expanded by about 15%, relative to time estimates made at rest. With a time reproduction task, Tonelli et al (2022) replicated and expanded these results by showing that time distortions were still evident approximately 15-20 minutes after the end of physical activity. Moreover, despite time distortions which occurred for all the tested durations, they were stronger for stimuli within the milliseconds range (0.2-0.8 ms) compared to longer stimuli (1.6, 3.2 s).…”

“…Moreover, during running the continuous up and down movement of the head might trigger a series of complex vestibuloocular movements aimed at stabilizing the eye relatively to the external world (Purves et al, 2001), these movements that are significantly mitigated during cycling. These and probably other factors might have contributed to the differences observed in the effects of running and cycling on time perception including the fact that, while the effect of cycling has been reported to last several minutes after the end of the exercise (Tonelli et al, 2022), the effect of running on time perception seems to fade out immediately after the running period (Petrizzo et al, 2022). With the current results, we cannot determine which factors underlie these differences, but these certainly highlight the need for studies directly comparing the effects yielded by different physical exercises on time perception.…”

“…As previous results obtained with both running (Petrizzo et al, 2022) and cycling (Tonelli et al, 2022) procedures suggested an independence between timing biases and heart rate acceleration induced by exercise, we also ran a series of correlations between the perceptual biases induced by the running phase and heart rate modulations. As an index of heart rate modulation induced by the running phase we calculated, separately for each participant and condition, the difference between the heart rate measured at rest (see methods) and the average heart rate measured while running (without considering the first three minutes needed to reach the HR threshold, see methods).…”