A sensory integration account for time perception

• Published in: PLoS computational biology Vol. 17; no. 1; p. e1008668
• Main Authors: Toso, Alessandro, Fassihi, Arash, Paz, Luciano, Pulecchi, Francesca, Diamond, Mathew E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 29.01.2021; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Analysis; Biology and Life Sciences; Computational biology; Engineering and Technology; Expected values; Experiments; Human subjects; Methods; Normal distribution; Perceptions; Physical Sciences; Sensory integration; Sensory stimulation; Short term memory; Social Sciences; Stimuli; Temporal perception; Time perception; Velocity; Vibration; Vibrations; Italy
• ISSN: 1553-7358; 1553-734X; 1553-7358
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008668

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.