A sensory integration account for time perception.

The connection between stimulus perception and time perception remains unknown. The present study combines human and rat psychophysics with sensory cortical neuronal firing to construct a computational model for the percept of elapsed time embedded within sense of touch. When subjects judged the dur...

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Main Authors: Alessandro Toso, Arash Fassihi, Luciano Paz, Francesca Pulecchi, Mathew E Diamond
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2021-01-01
Series:PLoS Computational Biology
Online Access:https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008668&type=printable
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author Alessandro Toso
Arash Fassihi
Luciano Paz
Francesca Pulecchi
Mathew E Diamond
author_facet Alessandro Toso
Arash Fassihi
Luciano Paz
Francesca Pulecchi
Mathew E Diamond
author_sort Alessandro Toso
collection DOAJ
description The connection between stimulus perception and time perception remains unknown. The present study combines human and rat psychophysics with sensory cortical neuronal firing to construct a computational model for the percept of elapsed time embedded within sense of touch. When subjects judged the duration of a vibration applied to the fingertip (human) or whiskers (rat), increasing stimulus intensity led to increasing perceived duration. Symmetrically, increasing vibration duration led to increasing perceived intensity. We modeled real spike trains recorded from vibrissal somatosensory cortex as input to dual leaky integrators-an intensity integrator with short time constant and a duration integrator with long time constant-generating neurometric functions that replicated the actual psychophysical functions of rats. Returning to human psychophysics, we then confirmed specific predictions of the dual leaky integrator model. This study offers a framework, based on sensory coding and subsequent accumulation of sensory drive, to account for how a feeling of the passage of time accompanies the tactile sensory experience.
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issn 1553-734X
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language English
publishDate 2021-01-01
publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS)
record_format Article
series PLoS Computational Biology
spelling doaj-art-9cb14a03ab8f402e804e2b4c2a1c10aa2025-08-20T02:17:05ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS Computational Biology1553-734X1553-73582021-01-01171e100866810.1371/journal.pcbi.1008668A sensory integration account for time perception.Alessandro TosoArash FassihiLuciano PazFrancesca PulecchiMathew E DiamondThe connection between stimulus perception and time perception remains unknown. The present study combines human and rat psychophysics with sensory cortical neuronal firing to construct a computational model for the percept of elapsed time embedded within sense of touch. When subjects judged the duration of a vibration applied to the fingertip (human) or whiskers (rat), increasing stimulus intensity led to increasing perceived duration. Symmetrically, increasing vibration duration led to increasing perceived intensity. We modeled real spike trains recorded from vibrissal somatosensory cortex as input to dual leaky integrators-an intensity integrator with short time constant and a duration integrator with long time constant-generating neurometric functions that replicated the actual psychophysical functions of rats. Returning to human psychophysics, we then confirmed specific predictions of the dual leaky integrator model. This study offers a framework, based on sensory coding and subsequent accumulation of sensory drive, to account for how a feeling of the passage of time accompanies the tactile sensory experience.https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008668&type=printable
spellingShingle Alessandro Toso
Arash Fassihi
Luciano Paz
Francesca Pulecchi
Mathew E Diamond
A sensory integration account for time perception.
PLoS Computational Biology
title A sensory integration account for time perception.
title_full A sensory integration account for time perception.
title_fullStr A sensory integration account for time perception.
title_full_unstemmed A sensory integration account for time perception.
title_short A sensory integration account for time perception.
title_sort sensory integration account for time perception
url https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008668&type=printable
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