time perception essay

Cover Story

The fluidity of time: scientists uncover how emotions alter time perception.

• Experimental Psychology
• Neuroimaging
• Neuroscience
• Time Perception

Humans have a fitful relationship with the clock, if modern idioms are any indication. Time flies when we’re having fun. It drags when we’re bored. Sometimes it’s on our side; other times it’s racing against us.

The gap between how time passes and how we experience it has engaged psychological scientists for more than 150 years. Pioneers in psychophysics such as Gustav Theodor Fechner and Ernst Heinrich Weber set the foundations for this line of research in the 1800s as they explored the intricacies of human perception.

Flash forward to the 21st century, and the study of time perception serves as a hallmark of integrative research, mixing linguistics, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and attention research to explore the ways people feel the minutes and hours pass.

The Internal Timekeeper

For decades, scientists conceptualized time perception according to theoretical models that essentially posited a biological stopwatch in the brain, which slowed and accelerated in line with attention and arousal. More recently, researchers have been searching for the precise brain areas responsible for internal timekeeping. Using newer technologies such as functional MRI, scientists such as APS Fellow Warren H. Meck at Duke University have concluded that a large network of neural areas, not just a single brain structure, underlies time processing. And neuroscientists in Europe, including Nobel laureate Edvard Moser, have been using optogenetics (a biological technique used to control and monitor individual neurons) with mice to identify specific brain regions that affect our subjective timekeeping.

In the midst of the neuroscientific focus on time perception, scientists continue to recognize the integral role that happiness, sadness, fear, and other emotions play in the way we feel the passing of seconds and minutes. APS James McKeen Cattell Fellow Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi of Claremont Graduate University first identified the way enjoyable experiences can affect our focus on time. Csikszentmihalyi famously coined the term “flow” to describe the experience of being so happily immersed in an activity — be it athletics, work, or a creative project — that all distractions are shut out. A key feature of the flow experience is a distorted sense of time — typically a feeling that time has passed faster than usual.

Subsequent research has identified the sheer pursuit of rewards, from experiences to material goods, as an ingredient for temporal illusions. These studies often incorporate the oddball effect — a phenomenon in which encountering novel stimuli inflates perceived durations. Dartmouth University psychological scientist Peter Ulric Tse and colleagues demonstrated this effect in 2004 when they showed research participants repetitive images flashing on a computer screen, followed by a single novel image. Although all the images stayed on the screen for the same amount of time, participants reported that the oddball image seemed to last longer than the others.

Psychological scientists in the Netherlands recently demonstrated the influence of potential rewards tied to the oddball effect. In a series of lab experiments, Michel Failing and Jan Theeuwes of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam showed participants a series of images, one of which was different from the rest. The participants indicated whether the oddball image stayed on screen for a longer or shorter period than the rest of the images. When they could earn a reward for a correct answer in the form of a large number of points, they perceived the oddball images as prolonged compared with oddballs that earned them no points.

The Pursuit of Pleasure

Being presented with the opportunity to earn a reward may make seconds or minutes seem prolonged, but desire may have a rather different effect, according to a 2012 study conducted at the University of Alabama. In a series of experiments, psychological scientists Philip Gable and Bryan Poole examined “approach motivation,” the drive to achieve goals, positive experiences, or vital resources such as food and water. Relative to neutral states or positive states with low approach motivation, positive states with high approach motivation shortened perceptions of time, they found.

In one of the experiments, the researchers trained participants to tell the difference between pictures shown for a ‘short’ (e.g., 400 ms) or a ‘long’ (up to 1600 ms) period of time. The participants then viewed pictures that were neutral (geometric shapes), positive and low in approach motivation (flowers), or positive and high in approach motivation (delicious desserts). For each picture, they had to indicate whether the picture had been displayed for a short or long period of time.

Just as the researchers hypothesized, the participants perceived the enticing pictures of desserts as having been displayed for a shorter amount of time (regardless of the actual duration) than either the neutral geometric shapes or the pleasing pictures of flowers.

The researchers also found that the perceived amount of time for the enticing pictures was related to when participants had eaten that day. Those participants who had eaten recently, which presumably lowered their approach motivation for food, judged the dessert pictures as having been displayed for longer periods of time than did their hungrier peers.

A second study, in which participants reported time as passing faster when they looked at the dessert pictures with the expectation that they would be able to eat those desserts later, confirmed these findings.

Gable and Poole propose that states high in approach motivation make us feel as though time is passing quickly because they narrow our memory and attention processes, helping us to shut out irrelevant thoughts and feelings.

“Just being content or satisfied may not make time fly,” Gable said when the study was published, “but being excited or actively pursuing a desired object can.”

The study authors suggest this phenomenon may have a helpful function: If reaching a goal requires waiting or sustained hard work across a period of time, it would be an advantage if that period seems brief.

Taking a Pause

Other positive emotions may have the opposite effect on time perception, studies show. In 2012, behavioral science researchers from Stanford University and the University of Minnesota published their results from a trio of experiments examining the consequences of awe-filled experiences. The participants in these experiments engaged in activities such as watching awe-inspiring videos of people in everyday situations encountering and interacting with huge animals or watching waterfalls, for example. Compared with participants who completed less awe-inspiring activities, participants in the awe conditions reported feeling time passing more slowly. Additional findings from the experiments suggest that awe caused people to feel more “in the moment” and led them to see time as more abundant.

Nature itself may slow our sense of time. In a series of studies, psychological researchers at Carleton University in Canada tested whether people perceived time moving more slowly in nature compared with urban settings. In experiments that included both virtual and actual environments, participants experienced walking through either natural surroundings such as a forest trail or bustling urban locations such as New York City. They estimated the duration of the experiences in minutes and seconds. The first three experiments involved imagery, and researchers found no significant difference in estimates of actual time duration between the nature and urban conditions. But in all three studies, the participants in the nature condition reported feeling a slower passage of time compared with those in the urban setting. And when the researchers actually took participants for walks in either natural or urban settings, those in the nature condition reported longer objective and subjective perceptions of elapsed time. Individuals in the nature condition also reported feeling more relaxed than those in the urban condition.

Of all the human emotions, fear is the most intensively examined in studies of time judgment, according to Sylvie Droit-Volet, a professor in developmental and cognitive psychology at Université Clermont Auvergne, France, and one of the most prolific researchers on emotions and time perception.

Indeed, neuroscientist and author David Eagleman famously showed a connection between fear and time illusions several years ago. Eagleman strapped chronometric devices to experiment participants’ wrists and sent them on a 15-story drop on an amusement park ride. When asked later, most individuals overestimated the duration of the fall.

Scientists hypothesize that threatening stimuli — the most innately disturbing forms of novelty — cause intense physiological reactions that distort our internal sense of the passage of time. In a study published in 2011, Droit-Volet and her colleagues had university students rate their moods both before and after showing them different video segments that induced a mood of fear, one of sadness, or a neutral emotion. In the “fear” session, the participants watched clips from horror movies including Scream and The Shining. In the “sad” session, they watched segments of heartrending dramas such as Philadelphia and City of Angels. And the “neutral” session involved informational videos (e.g., weather forecasts and stock market updates). As expected, the horror films induced feelings of fear among the students, while the dramas induced sadness and the neutral clips spurred minimal emotional effects.

In addition, just before and after viewing each set of video categories, the participants had to estimate the duration of a stimulus (blue dot). Droit-Volet and colleagues found distortion in time judgment after compared with before (baseline estimates) viewing the scary films, while no change in time judgment was observed after viewing the sad and neutral film clips. Under the influence of fear, participants judged the stimulus durations as longer. The results suggest that fear distorts our experience of time in order to be prepared to act as fast as possible in case of danger.

APS James McKeen Cattell Fellow Richard A. Bryant demonstrated this effect in the field 10 years ago when he and then-graduate student Leah A. Campbell conducted a study involving more than 60 people who went skydiving for the first time. Bryant and Campbell asked the participants to rate their levels of both fear and excitement as they prepared to embark. Thirty minutes after completing their 14,000-foot jump, the novices estimated, in minutes, the time that had elapsed from the moment they began putting on their skydiving gear to the moment they landed. Those who had rated themselves higher on the fear scale provided longer time estimates for the experience compared with those who scored high on excitement.

The Time Ahead

Increasingly, researchers are taking a closer look at the brain to better understand the relationship between emotion and time perception. Neurotransmitters such as dopamine and norepinephrine, which play roles in reward and threat responses, respectively, are drawing particular interest. The work holds significant promise for research into the symptoms of mental and motor disorders that have been linked to both abnormal dopamine levels and impaired time perception. And neuroimaging, when combined with emerging statistical techniques, may help uncover new insights into individual differences in subjective time experience, William J. Matthews of Cambridge University wrote with Meck in a 2014 article.

Other empirical pursuits are taking a longer view, focusing on how we experience passing months and years rather than the minutes that elapse during a car crash or a walk down the beach. The research also has important implications for our understanding of clinical conditions such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity and post-traumatic stress disorders, depression, and schizophrenia, all of which are associated with erratic temporal awareness.

Time perception is even showing up as an outcome measure for other psychological phenomena, including social interactions. In a 2015 study, for example, psychological scientists led by APS Fellow Gordon B. Moskowitz of Lehigh University showed evidence that White people — particularly those who worry about appearing racist — perceive time as slower when observing faces of Black men. This could possibly explain a range of examples of implicit biases, such as doctors unintentionally spending less time with Black patients compared with White patients, they report in Psychological Science .

Discoveries about temporal illusions hold implications for a seemingly endless stream of life activities. Beneath individuals’ efforts to stay patient in jammed traffic, set aside quality time with family and friends, meet a deadline, or even give an accurate eyewitness report lie our personal estimates of the seconds and minutes ticking forward.

Campbell, L. A., & Bryant, R. A. (2006). How time flies: A study of novice skydivers. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 45 , 1389–1392. doi:10.1016/j.brat.2006.05.011

Davydenko, M., & Peetz, J. (2017). Time grows on trees: The effect of nature settings on time perception. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 54 , 20–26. doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2017.09.003

Droit-Volet, S. (2013). Time perception, emotions and mood disorders. Journal of Physiology – Paris, 107 , 255–264. doi:10.1016/j.jphysparis.2013.03.005

Droit-Volet, S., Fayolle, S. L., & Gil, S. (2011). Emotion and time perception: Effects of film-induced mood. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 5 , 33. doi:10.3389/fnint.2011.00033

Failing, M., & Theeuwes, J. (2016). Reward alters the perception of time. Cognition, 148 , 19–26.

Gable, P. A., & Poole, B. D. (2012). Time flies when you’re having approach-motivated fun. Psychological Science, 23 , 879–886. doi:10.1177/0956797611435817

Matthews, W. J., & Meck, W. H. (2014). Time perception: The bad news and the good. WIREs Cognitive Science, 5 , 429–446. doi:10.1002/wcs.1298.

Moskowitz, G. B., Olcaysoy Okten, I., & Gooch, C. M. (2015). On race and time. Psychological Science, 26 , 1783–1794. doi:10.1177/0956797615599547

Rudd, M., Vohs, K. D., & Aaker, J. (2012). Awe expands people’s perception of time, alters decision making, and enhances well-being. Psychological Science, 23 , 1130–1136. doi:10.1177/0956797612438731

Tse, P.U., Intriligator, J., Rivest, J., & Cavanaugh, P. (2014). Attention and the subjective expansion of time. Perception & Psychophysics, 66 , 1171–1189.

Having Fun When Time Flies

While many time-perception studies show how emotional cues can alter an individual’s estimate of time passed, some have taken an opposite approach and demonstrated how manipulating the clock itself can affect engagement and enjoyment.

In a set of experiments conducted nearly a decade ago, undergraduate participants were assigned to a variety of conditions in which they engaged in such tasks as:

• completing word puzzles;
• listening to short clips of annoying sounds;
• listening to and rating a song they chose from a list of 12 popular selections; and
• reading and then recalling details from fabricated scientific news articles related to time.

For each experiment, the psychological researchers led by Aaron M. Sackett at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota manipulated external time cues (e.g., artificially accelerating or decelerating timers displayed on a computer screen). Sackett and his colleagues found that participants who reported feeling time passing unexpectedly quickly rated tasks are more engaging, noises as less irritating, and songs as more enjoyable compared with those cued to perceive time dragging.

Sackett and colleagues said the results suggest that “felt time distortion operates as a metacognitive cue that people implicitly attribute to their enjoyment of an experience (i.e., time flew, so the experience must have been fun).”

Sackett, A. M., Meyvis, T., Nelson, L. D., Converse, B. A., & Sackett, A. L. (2010). You’re having fun when time flies: The hedonic consequences of subjective time progression. Psychological Science, 21 , 111–117. doi:10.1177/0956797609354832

Pigeons too show time distortions. Using a temporal bisection task in which the pigeons learned to choose a red light when the target stimulus was on for 2 s and a green light when the stimulus was on for 10 s, we then tested durations in between. When the pigeons were required to peck the target, durations were judged as shorter than when they were required to refrain from pecking the target.

Zentall, T. R., & Singer, R. A. (2008). Required pecking and refraining from pecking alters judgments of time by pigeons. Learning & Behavior, 36, 55-61.

Grief makes time warp. For example, if you’ve just witnessed or received news of a loved one passing away, it’s as if time stands still. During the initial ‘shock’ of grief it is difficult to comprehend how others can continue to go about their daily lives whilst you’re in the midst of such catastrophic circumstances. I have to wonder whether we could ease the burden of grief if we could possibly find a way to reset our perception of time.

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Scientists Discuss How to Study the Psychology of Collectives, Not Just Individuals

In a set of articles appearing in Perspectives on Psychological Science, an international array of scientists discusses how the study of neighborhoods, work units, activist groups, and other collectives can help us better understand and respond to societal changes.

Artificial Intelligence: Your Thoughts and Concerns  

APS members weigh in on the biggest opportunities and/or ethical challenges involving AI within the field of psychological science. Will we witness vast and constructive cross-fertilization—or “a dystopian cyberpunk corporation-led hellscape”?

Hearing is Believing: Sounds Can Alter Our Visual Perception

Audio cues can not only help us to recognize objects more quickly but can even alter our visual perception. That is, pair birdsong with a bird and we see a bird—but replace that birdsong with a squirrel’s chatter, and we’re not quite so sure what we’re looking at. 

The illusion of time

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Andrew Jaffe is a cosmologist and head of astrophysics at Imperial College London.

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The Order of Time Carlo Rovelli Allen Lane (2018)

According to theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, time is an illusion: our naive perception of its flow doesn’t correspond to physical reality. Indeed, as Rovelli argues in The Order of Time , much more is illusory, including Isaac Newton’s picture of a universally ticking clock. Even Albert Einstein’s relativistic space-time — an elastic manifold that contorts so that local times differ depending on one’s relative speed or proximity to a mass — is just an effective simplification.

So what does Rovelli think is really going on? He posits that reality is just a complex network of events onto which we project sequences of past, present and future. The whole Universe obeys the laws of quantum mechanics and thermodynamics, out of which time emerges.

Rovelli is one of the creators and champions of loop quantum gravity theory, one of several ongoing attempts to marry quantum mechanics with general relativity. In contrast to the better-known string theory, loop quantum gravity does not attempt to be a ‘theory of everything’ out of which we can generate all of particle physics and gravitation. Nevertheless, its agenda of joining up these two fundamentally differing laws is incredibly ambitious.

Alongside and inspired by his work in quantum gravity, Rovelli puts forward the idea of ‘physics without time’. This stems from the fact that some equations of quantum gravity (such as the Wheeler–DeWitt equation, which assigns quantum states to the Universe) can be written without any reference to time at all.

As Rovelli explains, the apparent existence of time — in our perceptions and in physical descriptions, written in the mathematical languages of Newton, Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger — comes not from knowledge, but from ignorance. ‘Forward in time’ is the direction in which entropy increases, and in which we gain information.

The book is split into three parts. In the first, “The Crumbling of Time”, Rovelli attempts to show how established physics theories deconstruct our common-sense ideas. Einstein showed us that time is just a fourth dimension and that there is nothing special about ‘now’; even ‘past’ and ‘future’ are not always well defined. The malleability of space and time mean that two events occurring far apart might even happen in one order when viewed by one observer, and in the opposite order when viewed by another.

Rovelli gives good descriptions of the classical physics of Newton and Ludwig Boltzmann, and of modern physics through the lenses of Einstein and quantum mechanics. There are parallels with thermodynamics and Bayesian probability theory, which both rely on the concept of entropy, and might therefore be used to argue that the flow of time is a subjective feature of the Universe, not an objective part of the physical description.

But I quibble with the details of some of Rovelli’s pronouncements. For example, it is far from certain that space-time is quantized, in the sense of space and time being packaged in minimal lengths or periods (the Planck length or time). Rather, our understanding peters out at those very small intervals for which we need both quantum mechanics and relativity to explain things.

In part two, “The World without Time”, Rovelli puts forward the idea that events (just a word for a given time and location at which something might happen), rather than particles or fields, are the basic constituents of the world. The task of physics is to describe the relationships between those events: as Rovelli notes, “A storm is not a thing, it’s a collection of occurrences.” At our level, each of those events looks like the interaction of particles at a particular position and time; but time and space themselves really only manifest out of their interactions and the web of causality between them.

In the final section, “The Sources of Time”, Rovelli reconstructs how our illusions have arisen, from aspects of thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. He argues that our perception of time’s flow depends entirely on our inability to see the world in all its detail. Quantum uncertainty means we cannot know the positions and speeds of all the particles in the Universe. If we could, there would be no entropy, and no unravelling of time. Rovelli originated this ‘thermal time hypothesis’ with French mathematician Alain Connes.

The Order of Time is a compact and elegant book. Each chapter starts with an apt ode from classical Latin poet Horace — I particularly liked “Don’t attempt abstruse calculations”. And the writing, translated from Italian by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell, is more stylish than that in most physics books. Rovelli ably brings in the thoughts of philosophers Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl, sociologist Émile Durkheim and psychologist William James, along with physicist-favourite philosophers such as Hilary Putnam and Willard Van Orman Quine. Occasionally, the writing strays into floweriness. For instance, Rovelli describes his final section as “a fiery magma of ideas, sometimes illuminating, sometimes confusing”.

Ultimately, I’m not sure I buy Rovelli’s ideas, about either loop quantum gravity or the thermal time hypothesis. And this book alone would not give a lay reader enough information to render judgement. The Order of Time does, however, raise and explore big issues that are very much alive in modern physics, and are closely related to the way in which we limited beings observe and participate in the world.

Nature 556 , 304-305 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-04558-7

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Time Perception

Introduction, general overviews.

• Reference Resources
• Bibliographies
• Early Articles on Time Perception, 315 bce –1891 ce
• Subsequent Research on Time Perception, 1892–1956
• Origins of Modern Research on Time Perception, 1957–1964
• Late 20th and Early 21st Century, 1965–Present
• Time Perception Methods
• Psychophysics of Time Perception
• Scalar Expectancy Theory (SET)
• The Influence of Attention on Time Perception
• Time Present (Experienced Duration)
• Time Past (Remembered Duration)
• Past Time: Autobiographical Memory and Recency Judgments
• Future Time: Prospective Memory
• Theoretical Views
• Circadian Timing and Related Duration Experience
• Neurophysiological and Neuropsychological Findings
• Neurotransmitter and Psychopharmacological Findings
• Electroencephalographic and Neuroimaging Findings
• Developmental, Gender, Social, and Cross-Cultural Differences
• Aging and Time Perception
• Applied Psychology of Time Perception

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Time Perception by Richard A. Block , Peter A. Hancock LAST REVIEWED: 13 January 2014 LAST MODIFIED: 13 January 2014 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199828340-0123

The term time perception refers to a large subfield within the more general study of the psychology of time. It is an old and venerable topic in psychology. When psychology emerged from philosophy and medicine in the late 1800s, time perception became a major topic of interest. Researchers investigated many aspects of the psychology of time, especially the relationships between psychological and “real” (physical) time. Later, in about 1920, the tide turned: in the United States, behavioral psychologists asserted that psychologists should not investigate such topics. European psychologists did not agree, and they continued to investigate time perception, as they still do. Beginning in the 1960s, however, time psychologists started to be influential in the mainstream, even in the United States. They investigated how time perception involves many other processes. They began to integrate time perception along with attention, memory, and other cognitive psychological topics. After about the 1960s, and continuing to the present, time perception has seen a resurgence of interest. Now even an American time researcher can hold her or his head up and be proud to say, “I’m back.” This article focuses on the history and resurgence of time perception instead of the much more diverse topics of the psychology of time. Thus, we are excluding many references to clinical, pathology, personality, social, and other aspects of the psychology of time. This article includes only a few citations in those other subareas of psychology, mostly those that relate directly to time perception. The article presents a selective list of citations, undoubtedly omitting many important ones from hundreds of researchers, for anyone to get started on this fascinating topic. Given the selective nature of this article, there is only a limited number of publications can be included out of more than 13,000 of the journal articles, book chapters, and books published from the 1860s through the 2010s—more than 150 years of time perception research.

General overviews have been published in many edited books and chapters. Some of the more recent and influential are noted here. In chronological order: the edited volume Michon and Jackson 1985 , from a conference in The Netherlands, is still of interest. McGrath 1986 is a mostly social psychological book. Block 1990 is a book on cognitive models, which is still relevant. Friedman 1990 revealed how time experience relies on different processes and that it is important to understand temporal experience as involving separate components. Macar, et al. 1992 contains edited chapters based on presentations at a conference in France, and these are still worth reading. Helfrich 2003 is an important book, along with an earlier one, from two conferences in Germany. Meck 2003 focused on scalar timing and neural mechanisms, and it is also important to time researchers. More recently, Grondin 2008 contains many important chapters. Contemporary researchers of time psychophysics, time perception, and time cognition will want to read most of the chapters in it.

Block, R. A., ed. 1990. Cognitive models of psychological time . Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Eleven diverse chapters relating to time perception from a cognitive perspective. Widely cited.

Friedman, W. J. 1990. About time: Inventing the fourth dimension . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

An interesting book by a leading researcher, who mainly (but not only) focused on developmental psychology and time.

Grondin, S., ed. 2008. Psychology of time . Bingley, UK: Emerald.

Intentionally titled after the famous French psychologist’s single-authored book ( Fraisse 1963 , cited under Origins of Modern Research on Time Perception, 1957–1964 ), this is an important edited volume with thirteen chapters to read.

Helfrich, H., ed. 2003. Time and mind II: Information processing perspectives . Papers presented at the International Symposium on Time and Mind II, University of Hildesheim, 2–4 September 2002. Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe & Huber.

Chapters resulting from the second of two conferences in Germany. Arguably the better volume, containing articles on time perception and other related issues. For articles from the first conference, see H. Helfrich (ed.), Time and Mind (Seattle, WA: Hogrefe & Huber, 1996).

Macar, F., V. Pouthas, and W. J. Friedman, eds. 1992. Time, action and cognition: Towards bridging the gap . Papers presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Time, Action and Cognition, Saint-Malo, France, 22–25 October 1991. NATO ASI series. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-3536-0

Many articles inspired by a conference in Saint-Malo, France, which was organized in honor of Paul Fraisse, appeared in this important volume.

McGrath, J. E., ed. 1986. Research toward a psychology of time . Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE.

Mostly social psychologically oriented.

Meck, W. H., ed. 2003. Functional and neural mechanisms of interval timing . Methods and New Frontiers in Neuroscience. Boca Raton, FL: CRC.

DOI: 10.1201/9780203009574

A very important edited collection of articles on neural processes and timing behavior. Many of the articles concern interval timing. Any researcher interested in the Scalar Expectancy Theory (SET) —and how brains time intervals—will want to read this book.

Michon, J. A., and J. L. Jackson, eds. 1985. Time, mind, and behavior . Papers presented at the International Workshop on Time, Mind, and Behavior, University of Groningen, September 1984. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-70491-8

Chapters arising from an important early conference in Groningen, The Netherlands. Michon’s chapter provided a nice overview of temporal experience: “The Compleat Time Experiencer” (pp. 20–52).

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Feel the time. time perception as a function of interoceptive processing.

• 1 Department of Psychology, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy
• 2 Applied Technology for Neuro-Psychology Lab, IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy
• 3 Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council, Rome, Italy

The nature of time is rooted in our body. Constellations of impulses arising from the flesh constantly create our interoceptive perception and, in turn, the unfolding of these perceptions defines human awareness of time. This study explored the connection between time perception and interoception and proposes the Interoceptive Buffer saturation (IBs) index. IBs evaluates subjects’ ability to process salient stimuli from the body by measuring subjective distortions of interoceptive time perception, i.e., the estimated duration of tactile interoceptive stimulations. Thirty female healthy subjects were recruited through consecutive sampling and assessed for common variables related to interoceptive alterations: depressive symptoms (Beck Depression Inventory, BDI-II), eating disorders (EDI-3) risk, and anxiety levels (State Trait Anxiety Inventory, STAI). Interoceptive cardiac accuracy (IAc) was assessed as well. Subjects performed verbal time estimation of interoceptive stimuli (IBs) delivered using a specifically designed interoceptive tactile stimulator, as well as verbal time estimation of visual and auditory stimuli. Results showed that IBs index positively correlated with IAc, and negatively with EDI-3 Drive for Thinness (DT) risk subscale. Moreover, IBs index was positively predicted by IAc, and negatively predicted by DT and somatic factors of depression. Our results suggest that underestimations in interoceptive time perception are connected to different psychological conditions characterized by a diminished processing of high salience stimuli from the body. Conversely, overestimations of the duration of interoceptive stimuli appear to be function of subjects’ ability to correctly perceive their own bodily information. Evidence supported IBs index, fostering the concept of interoceptive treatments for clinical purposes.

Introduction

Time perception is a fundamental element of human awareness. Our consciousness, our ability to perceive the world around us and, ultimately, our very sense of self are shaped upon our perception of time in loop connecting memories of the past, present sensations and expectations about the future. Yet, the way we perceive time is widely debated.

Scalar Expectancy Theory ( Gibbon et al., 1984 ) is one of the most accepted frameworks of time perception ( Church, 1984 ; Treisman et al., 1990 ). A core tenet of SET is an internal clock with a pacemaker-accumulator component. Pulses emitted by the pacemaker are stored in the accumulator, and the amount of units stored in a finite span influences sample frequency and our time perception. A high pulse rate will store more units in the accumulator, therefore leading to overestimation in subjective perception, whereas a low pulse rate will produce opposite effects. Recent developments of SET included memory and decision making components along with the pacemaker-accumulator unit, providing a more efficient neurocognitive framework for time awareness ( Gibbon et al., 1984 ; Lui et al., 2011 ). Moreover, the Attentional Gate Model ( Zakay and Block, 1996 ) introduced attention as mediator of the mode switch between the pacemaker and the accumulator. Specifically, attention can control the mode switch ( Wearden and Penton-Voak, 1995 ; Droit-Volet and Meck, 2007 ; Wearden et al., 2010 ; Ogden et al., 2015a ) in such a way that, if the switch is open, some emitted pulses can be lost therefore contracting our perception of time ( Burle and Casini, 2001 ; Wittmann, 2009 ; Ogden, 2013 ).

The pacemaker-accumulator framework has been connected to an embodied model of time perception ( Wittmann and van Wassenhove, 2009 ; Wittmann et al., 2010 ) by several authors. In this perspective, bodily states and emotions represent central elements whereas high physiological arousal ( Gil and Droit-Volet, 2012 ; Grecucci et al., 2014 ; Ogden et al., 2015a ; Yoo and Lee, 2015 ; Mioni et al., 2016 ) can increase the pulse frequency of the pacemaker, creating overestimation of subjective time perception ( Wittmann, 2009 ). Numerous other authors also suggested that arousal and bodily signals are deeply connected with subjective time awareness ( Droit-Volet and Gil, 2009 ; Gil and Droit-Volet, 2012 ; Pollatos et al., 2014 ; Ogden et al., 2015a , b ), leading to the conclusion that perception of time is intimately rooted in our body.

An embodied perspective of time is also supported by various computational neuroscientific models that highlight the importance of the body and of bodily movements. Evidence from Tomassini and Morrone (2016) suggested that subjective perception of time is connected to the motor cortex whereas sensory-motor conflicts integration contributes to subjective distortion of time across different modalities. In a similar way, Orgs et al. (2013) linked the perception of time to the processing of human movements that subsides visual and motor cortical areas. Moreover, complementary evidence identified a direct link between temporal evaluation and visuo-motor representation of motor actions, highlighting the connection between time perception and body movements ( Gavazzi et al., 2013 ) also on representative level. Perception of time appears therefore as a fundamental requirement of several functions related to the body. To this account, Buonomano and Laje (2010) proposed the concept of “population clocks” that envisions perception of time as an emerging trait of recurrently connected neural networks that encode time, and specifically motor time, in the activity patterns of a population of neurons ( Buonomano, 2014 ). Along with previous discussed evidence, these converging data support therefore an embodied perspective of time perception in humans ( Kranjec and Chatterjee, 2010 ; Wittmann, 2014 ) which integrates several sources, from emotions to body movements, to create our awareness of time.

Further support to the embodied perspective of time comes from Craig’s recent work on the “interoceptive matrix” and its relations to human time awareness. The interoceptive matrix located in the anterior insular cortex (AIC) receives afferent inputs from small diameter sensory fibers through the lamina I spinothalamocortical pathway, which carries fundamental information from all the tissues of the body ( Craig, 2002 , 2003 , 2009 ; Gu et al., 2013 ; Gu and FitzGerald, 2014 ) creating interoceptive perceptions. Recent studies showed selective activation of the AIC in time perception ( Rao et al., 2001 ; Coull, 2004 ; Lewis and Miall, 2006 ; Livesey et al., 2007 ) specifically within the range of sub-seconds to seconds, confirming AIC as one of the core constituents of human awareness of time.

A central component of the interoceptive matrix is the interoceptive buffer ( Craig, 2009 ) that processes and compares interoceptive information with previous and past states of the body, in order to predict future conditions of the organism ( Friston, 2009 , 2010 ; Friston et al., 2011 ; Seth, 2013 ; Ondobaka et al., 2017 ). These interoceptive predictions serve to optimize the functioning of the organism, thus promoting prediction regulation—a control-theoretic process that has been characterized in terms of allostasis ( Sterling, 2012 ) or, more formally, as a prediction error (or free-energy) minimization ( Seth et al., 2011 ; Seth, 2013 ; Suzuki et al., 2013 ).

Craig (2009) proposed that the interoceptive buffer may play a key role in time perception as well. This is because the buffer has a finite dimension and it can be easily filled up with interoceptive inputs, altering our perception of time. Specifically, high rate of salient stimuli can saturate the finite dimension of the buffer, speeding up the sampling frequency, effectively slowing ( Tse et al., 2004 ; Campbell and Bryant, 2007 ; van Wassenhove et al., 2008 ; Wittmann and Paulus, 2008 ; Droit-Volet et al., 2011 ) the perception of time, which will appear to “stand still to the subjective observer” ( Craig, 2009 ). Contrary, when the interoceptive buffer is not filled up “large intervals of time in the objective world can appear to pass quickly” ( Craig, 2009 ).

Nonetheless, some studies revealed a paradox in time perception, when high rates of high salience stimuli can produce opposite effects ( Droit-Volet and Meck, 2007 ; Droit-Volet and Gil, 2009 ). These findings may be explained by a functional processing lateralization of different interoceptive valences. Specifically, AIC appeared to be asymmetrically activated in definite conditions, whereas parasympathetic inputs are preferentially processed by the mid and left insula, while sympathetic activity is usually processed by the right AIC ( Craig, 2009 ). According to Craig’s emotional asymmetry perspective, when we experience a dominant sympathetic arousal, stimuli processed in the right AIC speed up the sample rate frequency, accumulating pulses in the internal clock, leading therefore to overestimation of subjective time perception. Conversely, when we are engaged in a parasympathetic (e.g., affiliative) activation, stimuli are preferentially processed by the left AIC, leading to a subjective underestimation of time due to a lack of sympathetic activity ( Craig, 2009 ).

The present study started from the hypothesis that time perception is intimately related to the functioning of the interoceptive buffer ( Craig, 2009 ). However, while previous studies explored how bodily states can alter subjective time perception, our study focused on the opposite possibility: that is, the possibility to assess the degree of bodily input processing through distortions of interoceptive time perception. The key idea of Interoceptive Buffer saturation (IBs) index is to assess parasympathetic interoceptive stimuli, which are preferentially processed by the left insula ( Gordon et al., 2013 ) for distortions in subjective time estimation due to the sympathetic workload of the coactive right insula. Parasympathetic interoceptive stimuli are reproducible through a specific kind of touch called affective touch ( Olausson et al., 2002 , 2016 ). This kind of touch encompasses activation of C-T afferents connected to the interoceptive system. To this goal, IBs design uses a custom developed “interoceptive stimulator” able to send interoceptive tactile inputs, consequently measuring distortion in subjective time estimation of these stimuli. The estimated degree of time distortion can therefore provide insight on subject’s bodily information processing due to the relative interference of other interoceptive inputs in the subjective time estimation.

To the best of our knowledge, interoceptive buffer has never been operationalized neither experimentally explored, therefore our results can provide powerful theoretical and clinical insights regarding the relationship between bodily states and interoceptive processing.

From a practical point of view, the rationale behind the IBs index is to reverse engineer the connection between the interoceptive matrix and the subjective perception of time, feeding interoceptive stimuli through the C-T afferents in the secondary touch system connected to the lamina I spinothalamocortical pathway. Using the IBs methodology, subjective overestimations of time would suggest a dominance of sympathetic arousal, while subjective underestimations of time would suggest the opposite condition.

According to the emotional asymmetry framework C-T (affective) touch ( Olausson et al., 2002 ; Ackerley et al., 2014a , b ; Liljencrantz and Olausson, 2014 ) comprises a parasympathetic activation primarily processed by the left AIC ( Gordon et al., 2013 ) that might lead to an underestimation of time perception in healthy subjects ( Craig, 2009 ). Nonetheless, contextual interferences caused by sympathetic stimuli—such as high arousing negative ones—processed by the right AIC should interfere with this endogenous time base creating distortions in perception towards an overestimation of time.

Numerous studies suggested an asymmetric effect of sympathetic and parasympathetic input on time perception. Indeed, time perception of parasympathetic interoceptive related stimuli appeared underestimated in normal conditions without sympathetic dominant activation ( Ogden et al., 2015b ); conversely, induced sympathetic stimuli are able to directly alter the internal time baseline, paradoxically leading to a more accurate perception ( Mella et al., 2011 ) endorsing the notion of an emotional advantage for homeostatic regulation ( Ogden et al., 2015a ) as also confirmed by other authors ( Angrilli et al., 1997 ; Buetti and Lleras, 2012 ; Droit-Volet et al., 2013 ; Pezzulo et al., 2018 ).

Comprehending and studying the interoceptive buffer has paramount value. Correct access to interoceptive information is key to allostasis and adaptive regulation of the organism, whereas different conditions such as anorexia nervosa ( Pollatos et al., 2008 ) depression ( Dunn et al., 2007 ) and chronic pain ( Di Lernia et al., 2016b ) appeared connected to alterations in interoceptive processing. Although several other indexes are currently available to assess different interoceptive factors ( Garfinkel et al., 2015 ), IBs index may provide an advanced instrument with the ability not only to identify specific alterations but also the nature and the direction of the processes involved in these alterations. Common interoceptive deficits can be therefore connected to low buffer saturation levels indicating a diminished processing of stimuli arising from the body (i.e., anorexia nervosa, depression) but also with high saturation levels of negative arousal stimuli (i.e., chronic pain, anxiety) that can impair the perception of other inputs. Furthermore, IBs might also detect altered processing before the presence of actual deficits, providing an early indicator of clinical conditions not yet manifested.

To test IBs methodology, the study utilized a stream of interoceptive parasympathetic stimuli sent through the C-T afferents in the secondary touch system connected to the lamina I spinothalamocortical pathway, consequentially measuring for subjects’ distortions in time perception. Stimuli were delivered using an interoceptive stimulator specifically developed for the task. Considering aforementioned body of evidence, we hypothesized that healthy subjects will underestimate the duration of parasympathetic C-T interoceptive stimuli. Furthermore, we hypothesized that IBs index (i.e., the degree of duration estimation of interoceptive stimulation) will positively correlate with interoceptive accuracy (IAc) as a proxy of insula’s activity ( Pollatos et al., 2007a ). Moreover, we hypothesized that several psycho-physiological conditions that are known to interfere with AIC activity will influence IBs as well, leading to distortions in time perception accordingly to subjects’ sympathetic and parasympathetic balance. Specifically, we hypothesized that depressive symptoms ( Dunn et al., 2007 , 2010 ; Pollatos et al., 2009 ; Paulus and Stein, 2010 ; Wiebking et al., 2015 ) and eating disorder tendencies ( Pollatos et al., 2008 ), will interfere in a negative direction, while anxiety symptoms ( Whyman and Moos, 1967 ; Pollatos et al., 2009 , 2014 ; Dunn et al., 2010 ; Paulus and Stein, 2010 ; Yoo and Lee, 2015 ) and other sympathetic stimuli ( Ogden et al., 2015a ) in a positive one.

We tested these hypotheses on healthy subjects assessing for common variables connected to interoceptive alterations. We assessed for risk of anorexia nervosa through EDI-3 ( Garner et al., 1983 ) Drive for Thinness subscale ( Eshkevari et al., 2012 ), and depressive symptoms through Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II; Beck et al., 1961 ). Furthermore, we assessed anxiety factors through State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI; Spielberger et al., 1970 ) and endogenous interoceptive cardiac accuracy (IAc) as well ( Schandry, 1981 ).

Materials and Methods

Participants.

As part of a larger enlisting procedure in the university campus, 30 female subjects were recruited through consecutive sampling. Age (mean = 25.87 years, SD = 6.616) and BMI (mean = 20.827, SD = 2.24) were comparable to other healthy samples used in interoceptive studies ( Garfinkel et al., 2015 ). Sample was composed only by female subjects to avoid somatosensory differences in perception due to gender related factors ( Fillingim et al., 2009 ) as suggested by Ogden et al. (2015b) . Furthermore, a solely female sample ensured no differences related to scales sensitivity, especially regarding eating disorder risk assessed by EDI-3 ( Garner et al., 1983 ; Clausen et al., 2011 ; Eshkevari et al., 2012 ).

Exclusion criteria were the presence of current psychological or physical diagnoses, alterations in tactile perception (paraesthesia), allodynia and heart related conditions. Subjects were asked to avoid pharmacological medications in the 12 h before the experiment and nicotine and caffeine in the 2 h before the experiment.

This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the Ethics Committee of Catholic University of Sacred Heart of Milan with written informed consent from all subjects. All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki (2008). The protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of Catholic University of Sacred Heart of Milan.

On arrival, subjects received information about the experiment and proceeded to give written consent. Following a brief anamnestic interview and a series of psychological questionnaires, subjects were connected to a portable ECG device with Ag/AgCl electrodes to perform the IAc task. At the end of the task, electrodes were removed and subjects performed IBs, audio and video tasks. IBs, audio and video tasks were presented in randomized order.

Psychological Assessment

After their arrival subjects took part to a brief anamnestic interview with a psychologist specialized in psychopathological and personality assessment. After anamnestic data collection they performed a battery of questionnaires. Depressive symptoms were assessed through the BDI-II ( Beck et al., 1961 ). BDI-II is a 21 items self-report questionnaire with strong literature support. Anxiety symptoms were assessed through the well validated STAI ( Spielberger et al., 1970 ). STAI is a 40-item scale that provided measure of state (STAI-S) and trait (STAI-T) anxiety. Risks for eating disorders were assessed through EDI-3 ( Garner et al., 1983 ) risk subscales ( Eshkevari et al., 2012 ). EDI-3 risk subscales assessed three different aspect of eating disorders risk: Drive for Thinness (DT), Bulimia (B) and Body Dissatisfaction (BD). Global risk index (EDRC) is composed summing the scores of these three subscales.

Interoceptive Accuracy

An IAc score was established with the Schandry heart beat task ( Schandry, 1981 ) through a portable ECG unit sampling at 250 Hz ( Villarrubia et al., 2014a , b ; Stojanović et al., 2015 ; Ševcík et al., 2015 ; Hugeng and Kurniawan, 2016 ) with Ag/AgCl electrodes. Time intervals were 25, 35, 45 and 100 s. Accuracy index was calculated with the following formula: 1/4∑(1 − (|recorded heartbeats − counted heartbeats|)/recorded heartbeats).

We focused on cardiac interoception not only because Schandry task is considered the standard measure for IAc, but also because Craig (2009) suggested that time perception might be fundamentally based upon cardiorespiratory function.

Interoceptive Stimulation

The Interoceptive Buffer saturation (IBs) task applied interoceptive parasympathetic stimuli and asked the participants to estimate the duration of these stimuli. While there are several different kinds of interoceptive stimuli, for the goal of this study we used light touch as primary parasympathetic input ( Ackerley et al., 2014b ). Neuroanatomical evidence identified specific C tactile (C-T) afferents, which report directly to the AIC ( Gordon et al., 2013 ) that are exquisitely sensitive to light touch ( Vallbo et al., 1999 ; Ackerley et al., 2014b ). Unmyelinated C-T fibers selectively respond to slow tactile brushing stimuli between 1 cm/s and 10 cm/s ( Crucianelli et al., 2013 ; McGlone et al., 2014 ). Therefore, we used an instrument explicitly developed to distribute precise C-T stimuli (Figure 1 ) and specifically programmed for the IBs task.

Figure 1 . Interoceptive Stimulator.

Unmyelinated C-fiber tactile afferents are a specific type of fibers that can be found in not glabrous skin, constituting a secondary touch system that projects in the AIC ( Olausson et al., 2002 ). They have been specifically identified in the facial skin ( Nordin, 1990 ) and in the forearm ( Vallbo et al., 1995 , 1999 ; Wessberg et al., 2003 ). They are receptive to low force and low velocity strokes stimuli ( Ackerley et al., 2014a , b ). They exhibit a particular firing behavior with and inverted U relationship with stroke velocity ( Löken et al., 2009 ), a tendency to fatigue ( Iggo, 1960 ; Wessberg et al., 2003 ) and an after-discharge pattern that may present secondary characteristic such as delayed acceleration ( Vallbo et al., 1995 , 1999 ).

For such reason, the interoceptive stimulator has been designed to provide continuous interoceptive stimuli on the forearm, accounting for all C-T afferents factors. C-T afferents showed their maximal mean firing frequency at slow stroking velocity of 3 cm/s ( Ackerley et al., 2014a ), thus the interoceptive stimulator was set to move the brush tip at the exact speed of 3 cm/s (± 0.5 cm/s). The brush tip had an oval shape area of ≈35 mm 2 , to match the receptive field of a human C-T afferent ( Wessberg et al., 2003 ; Liljencrantz and Olausson, 2014 ). The brush used a constant force <2.5 mN that is reported as C-T threshold by different authors ( Nordin, 1990 ; Vallbo et al., 1999 ; Macefield, 2009 ), measured according to Vallbo et al. (1999) . Furthermore, the brush design has been specifically developed to avoid fatigue and inexcitability ( Iggo, 1960 ; Wessberg et al., 2003 ). As a matter of fact, C-T afferents decrease their firing rate to zero after 5 s of continuous stimulation ( Liljencrantz and Olausson, 2014 ). Therefore, the brush tip moved in a circular pattern (10 cm of total length) at specific velocity of 3 cm/s plus a linear velocity of 0.5 cm/s. Considering circular pattern, receptive field area, brush tip dimensions (8.6 × 4.1 mm) and strokes velocity, a single cluster of C-T afferents received stimulation only for ≈0.3 s (0.28 s) within a single revolution, widely below the 5 s limit. The rest span between field stimuli allowed possible after-discharges to be expressed within the active test duration. Furthermore, 6 s resting phase between single trials and 1 min resting phase between stimulation blocks ensured an acceptable recovery of the C-T afferent fields. Delayed acceleration did not have a particular relevance for our design, considering that is not associated with subjective sensations ( Vallbo et al., 1995 , 1999 ).

Interoceptive Buffer Saturation (IBs) Index

The IBs task is based on the Tactile Estimation Task (TET) for spatial recognition, but the protocol is adapted to temporal estimation ( Kramer et al., 2011 ), thus providing a simple and non-invasive procedure to assess the degree of estimation of duration of the interoceptive stimulus. The task consists in delivering interoceptive brush strokes to subject’s left volar forearm, and successively asking for verbal time estimation (VET) of the time passed. The choice of VET 1 is due to its effectiveness in probing time perception related to visual, auditory ( Gil and Droit-Volet, 2011 ) and tactile dimensions ( Ogden et al., 2015b ) assessing for alterations in pulse rates within the pacemaker-accumulator ( Mioni et al., 2016 ). Previous studies focused upon inducing distortions in the inner flow of time, trough external inductive stimuli. Conversely, IBs index will use the natural flow of time inside the interoceptive matrix to probe the saturation of interoceptive buffer.

Previous studies regarding interoceptive touch utilized stimulation at different velocity (>20 cm/s) or different target sites (i.e., palms of the hands) as control procedures. These control tasks rely upon A-fibers stimulation and these fibers are selectively activated by high velocities/high pressure stimuli or selectively present in the palm of the hands ( Ackerley et al., 2014a , b ; Liljencrantz and Olausson, 2014 ; McGlone et al., 2014 ). Nonetheless, these kind of control conditions were not suitable for the present study design due to the fact that perceived duration depends on perceived speed ( Tomassini et al., 2011 ), excluding the possibility to use fast stimuli (speed > 20 cm/s) as control for interoceptive touch ( Crucianelli et al., 2013 ; Ackerley et al., 2014a ). Additionally, slow brush stimuli on the palm of the hands showed hedonic (parasympathetic) velocity-independent valence ( Ackerley et al., 2014b ), which could compromise IBs task design. Moreover, different clinical subjects exhibited deficits in tactile perception connected to A-fibers ( Keizer et al., 2011 , 2012 ; Stanton et al., 2013 ; Catley et al., 2014 ), thus A-fibers stimulation cannot be reliably used as control procedure in perspective of IBs index. Therefore, common audio and visual time estimation tasks were performed as control procedures upon separate sensory modalities.

Subjects were seated in a chair in a comfortable room while the clinician explained the experiment. They were instructed to give a “subjective time estimation of the stimulation”. They were instructed not to count the time passing, to pay attention to the feeling of the stimulation and to close their eyes for the entire duration of the procedure. To avoid counting, clinician suggested focusing on the physical sensation of the stimulation. Subjects were instructed that stimuli could last between “1 and 30 s approximately”, to avoid levelling underestimation effect ( Ogden et al., 2015b ). Subjects laid their left arm on the table in front of the clinician, bare skin ( Tsakiris et al., 2011 ; Ackerley et al., 2014b ). The clinician began the experiment starting the training block on the stimulator program delivering three brush stimuli of 7, 21, and 15 s, allowing the subject to familiarize with the procedure. No feedbacks were provided for effective durations or for performances. After each stimulus, a pause of 6 s allowed clinician to ask the subject, “ How many seconds do you feel the stimulus lasted ?” After the training procedure, clinician started the experimental task with randomized time durations. IBs index task delivered stimuli from 8 s to 18 s, at fixed intervals (8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18). The experimental task provided six randomized predetermined stimuli per block, for three randomized blocks. Partial accuracy index for each time interval was calculated with the following formula: 1/3∑((time estimation − real time)/real time). Total index was calculated as mean of partial indexes.

Audio and Video Time Estimation

Audio and video estimation tasks were common tasks frequently used and well described in the literature. Following Kramer et al. (2011) , audio task presented a series of audio amplitude-steady complex tones. Video task replicated procedures from Wearden et al. (1998) substituting tones with a 4 × 4 cm light blue square presented on an iPad. Stimuli durations were 100, 200, 500, 1000 and 3000 ms replicated six times each and presented in random order. Audio task had a training procedure of 1000, 300 and 1500 ms. Video task had a training procedure of 1500, 1000 and 500 ms. Subjects were not informed about durations or performances ( Wearden et al., 1998 ; Grondin, 2010 ; Kramer et al., 2011 ) but they were informed that stimuli could last between 50 ms and 4000 ms ( Ogden et al., 2015b ). After each stimulus subjects wrote the estimated duration in milliseconds on a data collection grid. Accuracy indexes were calculated with the following formula: 1/6∑((time estimation − real time)/real time). Total index was calculated as mean of partial indexes.

Statistical Analyses

To verify underestimation of interoceptive C-T stimuli, a series of one sample t -test were used to determine if mean time estimation for every single interval differed significantly from real time values. The same procedure has also been applied to audio and video mean estimations.

A repeated measures ANOVA was run for IBs partial indexes between first, second and last stimulation block to verify that IBs task did not have any effect on the buffer.

A repeated measures ANOVA was run for IBs, audio and video accuracy indexes to identify significant differences between accuracy verbal estimation scores in different sensory modalities. Bonferroni post hoc was run to identify difference between groups.

Due to known limitations ( Dunn et al., 2010 ) inherent assessment scales used, different factor structures have been implemented to better explore relationship between variables. Specifically, analyses implemented a two-factors structure for BDI-II to explore somatic and cognitive depression factors ( Steer et al., 1999 ; Storch et al., 2004 ), and a four-factors structure for STAI to explore the presence and the absence of anxiety elements, both in state and trait dimensions ( Vigneau and Cormier, 2008 ). Furthermore, scatterplot graphs and literature regarding interaction between interoception and depression ( Dunn et al., 2007 , 2010 ; Pollatos et al., 2009 ) suggested a quadratic negative relationship between BDI-II somatic factor and IBs.

Correlation analyses were run for variables of main interest. Moreover, a multiple regression analysis was conducted with IBs index as dependent variable and IAc, EDI DT subscale and BDI-II somatic symptoms as predictors.

Following literature suggestions ( Pollatos et al., 2009 ; Dunn et al., 2010 ), a second multiple regression analysis was conducted with IBs index as dependent variable and IAc, EDI DT subscale, BDI-II somatic symptoms and interaction between the somatic component of BDI-II and the positive factor of STAI-S as predictors. All variables were centered before entering the regression analysis. The positive factor of STAI-S and the somatic factor of BDI-II were also z-standardized before calculating the interaction term. All the low level terms were left in the regression, as per methodological recommendations ( Aiken et al., 1991 ). Residual plots were checked along with normality for observed standardized and unstandardized residuals. The same regression analyses were also conducted with audio and video accuracy indexes in substitution of IBs index.

Sample Psychological Characteristics

Total sample of N = 30 showed high levels of trait anxiety (mean = 42.90, SD = 9.732) and moderate to high level of state anxiety (mean = 35.80 SD = 7.406). Results were comparable to other previous studies ( Aktekin et al., 2001 ; Pollatos et al., 2007b , 2009 ).

Depressive symptoms were higher (mean = 7.60, SD = 5.157) than previous samples in interoceptive studies ( Pollatos et al., 2009 ) with subjects in range of mild clinical depression ( Steer et al., 1999 ; Storch et al., 2004 ) allowing us to meaningfully explore relationship with this variable.

Nonetheless, depressive symptoms levels were comparable to normative data for similar populations ( Storch et al., 2004 ). EDI-3 subscales assessed moderate risks of ED specifically related to BD (mean = 12.77, SD = 7.938; BD) and Drive for Thinness (mean = 7.47, SD = 6.564; DT). Several significant correlations were found between psychometric variables. Results are summarized in Tables 1 , 2 . Scatterplot distributions are provided in Figure 2 .

Table 1 . Sample characteristics and psychological assessment.

Table 2 . Correlation analyses for normally distributed variables of main interest.

Figure 2 . Scatterplot distributions. IBs, interoceptive buffer saturation index; IAc, interoceptive cardiac accuracy; EDI_DT, EDI drive for thinness risk subscale; Audio, Audio accuracy index; Video, video accuracy index; BDI, Beck Depression inventory; STAI_T, STAI trait anxiety; STAI_S, STAI state anxiety.

Interoceptive cardiac accuracy ( Schandry, 1981 ) is a measure of heart-rate detection ability, and this sensitivity has been correlated with activation in the anterior insula ( Pollatos et al., 2007a ) and provided a standard measure of interoceptive awareness ( Garfinkel et al., 2015 ). IAc mean score was 0.473 (SD = 0.231) and median was 0.50. IAc significantly positively correlated with IBs index ( r = 0.504, p = 0.005). Results are summarized in Table 2 .

Interoceptive Buffer Saturation Index

As hypothesized, healthy subjects significantly underestimated durations of interoceptive stimuli. Mean scores were normally distributed. A series of one sample t -test showed significantly underestimation of mean time perception of interoceptive stimuli for all time spans: 8 s ( t (29) = −7.396, p < 0.001, d = −1.35), 10 s ( t (29) = −5.628, p < 0.001, d = −1.02), 12 s ( t (29) = −8.162, p < 0.001, d = −1.49), 14 s ( t (29) = −7.004, p < 0.001, d = −1.27), 16 s ( t (29) = −6.955, p < 0.001, d = −1.27), 18 s ( t (29) = −7.111, p < 0.001, d = −1.298). Results are summarized in Figure 3 .

Figure 3 . Mean time estimations of interoceptive tactile stimuli across different time spans. Interoceptive Buffer saturation (IBs) VET, mean verbal interoceptive time estimation. * p <0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001.

As hypothesized, IBs task did not have any manipulative effect on the buffer, confirming the effectiveness of the task as assessment instrument. A repeated measures ANOVA showed no statistically significant differences on partial IBs indexes between first, second and last stimulation block ( F (2,58) = 0.142, p = 0.868, η p 2 = 0.005). Results indicated that IBs task did not alter subjects’ endogenous baseline 2 .

As hypothesized, Pearson’s correlation analyses showed a significantly positive linear relationship between IBs and IAc ( r = 0.504, p = 0.005) and significantly negative linear relationship between IBs and EDI Drive for Thinness ( r = −0.375, p = 0.041). Results are summarized in Table 2 .

Scatterplot and literature ( Dunn et al., 2007 , 2010 ) suggested a quadratic relationship between depression and interoceptive processing. As hypothesized, IBs correlation with a quadratic term of BDI-II somatic factor approach significance for a negative relationship ( r = −0.358, p = 0.052).

A multiple regression analysis was conducted with IBs index as dependent variable and IAc, EDI Drive for Thinness and quadratic transformation of BDI-II somatic factor as predictors. Sample dimension assured an adequate power ( Harrell, 2015 ) for the analysis. As hypothesized, variables significantly predicted IBs ( R 2 = 0.443, F (3,26) = 6.880, p < 0.001). Beta standardized coefficients indicated that IAc significantly positively predicted IBs ( β = 0.420, p = 0.009) while EDI Drive for Thinness ( β = −0.306, p ≤ 0.05) and somatic depressive factor of BDI-II ( β = −0.324, p ≤ 0.05) 3 significantly negatively predicted saturation levels in the interoceptive buffer.

To explore relationship between anxiety and interoceptive buffer levels, a second multiple regression analysis was conducted with IBs index as dependent variable and IAc, EDI Drive for Thinness, BDI-II somatic quadratic transformation and interaction between the somatic component of BDI-II and the positive STAI-S factor as predictors ( Pollatos et al., 2009 ; Dunn et al., 2010 ; Paulus and Stein, 2010 ). Variables significantly predicted IBs ( R 2 = 0.529, adjusted R 2 = 0.406, F (6,23) = 4.306, p < 0.005). IAc positively predicted saturation levels in the buffer ( β = 0.465, p = 0.005) while EDI Drive for Thinness ( β = −0.345, p = 0.028) and BDI-II somatic factor ( β = −0.394, p = 0.018) significantly negatively predicted IBs. Interaction term between somatic BDI-II factor and positive STAI-S factor approached significance ( β = 0.318, p = 0.083). Sample size was slightly underpowered for this regression model, nonetheless methodological recommendations indicated that multiple regression is quite robust to small sample if adjusted R 2 is considered in substitution of R 2 ( Austin and Steyerberg, 2015 ).

One sample t -tests were performed between audio and video time estimations and real time spans. Wilcoxon tests were performed for not-normally distributed variables. Audio estimations did not show any statistically significant difference for 100, 200, 1000 and 3000 ms time spans ( p > 0.05) compared to real time spans. Subjects significantly overestimated 500 ms audio stimuli ( t (29) = 3.958, p < 0.001, d = 0.722). Video estimations did not show any statistically significant difference for 100, 500, 1000 ms time spans ( p > 0.05) compared to real time spans. Subjects significantly overestimated 200 ms video stimuli ( t (29) = 2.242, p = 0.033, d = 0.409) and significantly underestimated 3000 ms video stimuli ( t (29) = −3.032, p = 0.005, d = −0.553). Results are summarized in Figure 4 . One sample t -tests for paired sample were performed between normally distributed audio and video time estimations. Wilcoxon tests were performed for not-normally distributed values. Subjects judged audio stimuli significantly longer than video stimuli in time spans 500, 1000 and 3000 ms ( p = 0.005). A t -test for paired sample was performed between audio and video accuracy indexes without any statistically significant difference ( p = 0.232). Audio and video accuracy indexes significantly positively correlated ( r = 0.588, p = 0.001). Results are summarized in Table 2 . Regression analyses for audio ( p = 0.490) and video ( p = 0.478) accuracy indexes were performed with IAc, EDI_DT and BDI-II somatic factor. Both models failed to reach statistical significance 4 .

Figure 4 . Mean time estimation of audio and video stimuli across different time spans. Audio VET, mean verbal audio time estimation; Video VET, mean verbal video time estimation. * p <0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001.

Relationship Between Measures

A repeated measures ANOVA with a Greenhouse-Geisser correction was performed between IBs, audio and video accuracy indexes (factor accuracy). Results reported a statistically significant difference between accuracy indexes ( F (1.806,52.371) = 16.037, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.356). Post hoc tests using Bonferroni correction revealed that IBs accuracy index was significantly underestimated compared to both audio ( p < 0.001) and video ( p = 0.003) accuracy indexes. No statistically significant differences were found between audio and video accuracy indexes ( p = 0.697) although audio stimuli (mean = 0.241, SD = 0.080) were judged longer than video ones (mean = 0.126, SD = 0.116).

Several statistically significant correlations were found between psychometric variables. Results are summarized in Table 2 .

The study explored the connection between time perception and interoceptive processing, proposing the IBs index as a novel construct able to provide information about co-active processing within the interoceptive matrix (AIC; Craig, 2002 , 2003 , 2009 ). The IBs index relied upon a verbal estimation task of interoceptive stimuli sent through the secondary touch system connected to the lamina I spinothalamocortical pathway. Bidirectional distortions in the subjective time perception of these stimuli provide information about sympathetic and parasympathetic activity in the cortex. The interoceptive buffer is a key component of the interoceptive matrix and it constantly processes and compares information arising from the body, creating bodily meta-representations shaped upon the asymmetrical relationship between the right and the left insula. Understanding saturation levels within the buffer can provide meaningful insight about this relationship, whereas high levels of saturation may indicate large amount of sympathetic stimuli processed in the right insula, while opposite results may indicate that the interoceptive system is actually processing a low amount of high salience sympathetic stimuli from the body.

Recent evidence identified deficits in the insula connected with radically different psychopathological conditions. Chronic pain ( Schaefer et al., 2012 ; Weiss et al., 2014 ; Duschek et al., 2015 ), depression ( Dunn et al., 2007 , 2010 ; Pollatos et al., 2009 ; Sprengelmeyer et al., 2011 ; Sliz and Hayley, 2012 ; Stratmann et al., 2014 ), eating disorders ( Pollatos et al., 2008 ; Fischer et al., 2016 ) and several other conditions ( Rosso et al., 2010 ; Wylie and Tregellas, 2010 ; Hatton et al., 2012 ; Naqvi et al., 2014 ) comprised alterations within the interoceptive network. Nonetheless, it is not clearly understood how radically different conditions can impair the insula network in a similar way.

In our previous work ( Di Lernia et al., 2016a ), we suggested that IBs may provide a better measure of interoceptive processing compared to other available indexes, because it permits to disentangle the differential effects of interoceptive alterations within the matrix. Conceptualizing these alterations in terms of buffer saturation levels suggests that high levels of negative arousing stimuli may impair interoceptive processing through widespread interferences (i.e., interoceptive noise), whereas low stimuli processing may reduce body awareness (i.e., interoceptive silence), with both conditions leading to deficits in interoceptive perception.

The design of the study did not include non-interoceptive control stimuli, as explained in the “Materials and Methods” section. This was due to the nature of the task we adopted, in which different stimulation speeds—which are necessary to perform non interoceptive stimulation—would have yielded incomparable results in a time estimation task. A second equally important implication that defined IBs design is also that interoceptive tactile stimuli are never exclusively related to C-T fibers. Neurophysiological evidence indicated that every C-T related stimulus always comprises a concomitant activation of myelinated tactile fibers processed by the somatosensory cortex ( Roudaut et al., 2012 ). Although a mechanical stimulation such as the one delivered by the interoceptive stimulator can be tuned to produce massive peak activations in C-T tactile afferents, every interoceptive tactile stimulus always partially activates other myelinated fibers ( Crucianelli et al., 2013 ; Ackerley et al., 2014a , b ). Therefore a non-interoceptive control task would have yielded incomparable, albeit informative, results from IBs perspective. This was, among others, one of the prominent reasons according to which we have chosen different sensory modalities (audio and video) as control procedures; also in agreement with protocols to study emotions and time perception that usually compared results across different unrelated perceptive systems. Nonetheless, considering IBs design, only correlations between the index with the Schandry’s task and the questionnaires can be used for an interpretation regarding interoceptive processes.

As hypothesized, results confirmed that healthy subjects significantly underestimated the duration of parasympathetic interoceptive C-T stimuli, compared to actual time spans. Results confirmed previous findings about C-T processing ( Leonard et al., 2014 ; Ogden et al., 2015b ), supporting the methodology used in the present study and the effectiveness of the device developed. Comparing our results with previous studies about sympathetic stimuli ( Droit-Volet et al., 2011 ; Ogden et al., 2015a ) also endorsed Craig’s emotional time asymmetry framework and consequently the rationale behind the IBs index. Significant underestimation of C-T stimuli suggested that healthy subjects without dominant sympathetic activation tend to have a reduced stimuli processing in the right insula buffer, matching a low pulse rate within the interoceptive internal clock therefore experiencing a contraction in time perception due to a lack of salience in bodily arousal.

As hypothesized, IBs index positively correlated and was positively predicted by interoceptive cardiac accuracy (IAc). This result provided strong support regarding the validity of IBs index due to the ontological connection between the buffer and the degree of activation of the insula ( Pollatos et al., 2007a ). Nonetheless, correlation was sufficiently distinct to suggest that IBs index and interoceptive cardiac accuracy are two different, albeit intertwined, constructs.

IBs index negatively correlated and was negatively predicted by EDI-3 Drive for Thinness subscale, suggesting an interesting insight regarding the connection of the buffer with body perception. IAc is significantly reduced in clinical subjects with anorexia nervosa ( Pollatos et al., 2008 ); nonetheless, the nature of these deficits is not really understood even though they can be equally found in radically different conditions ( Di Lernia et al., 2016b ). In our sample, we found no significant correlation between IAc and Drive for Thinness, as expected for healthy females that did have neither interoceptive deficits nor anorexia nervosa. Conversely, we found a negative correlation between IBs and Drive for Thinness risk, suggesting that predisposition for anorexia nervosa can be connected to low saturation levels within interoceptive buffer. Considering our results, low saturation levels in the buffer (IBs) can be described as a hypo-saturation condition whereas the interoceptive matrix processes lower amounts of high salience (i.e., hunger, thirst etc.) stimuli from the body. This impaired processing activity can therefore lead to pervasive alterations in body perception and, ultimately, to the interoceptive deficits and bodily distortions identified in anorexia nervosa ( Pollatos et al., 2008 ). Recent fMRI evidence showed consistent alterations in the insula network both on functional ( Gaudio et al., 2015 ; Kerr et al., 2016 ) and structural level ( Gaudio et al., 2017 ) indicating impaired processing of high salience bodily stimuli in anorexia nervosa ( Wierenga et al., 2015 ), therefore supporting our results. Moreover, anorexic subjects showed no impairment in a time duration task connected to non-interoceptive neutral tactile stimuli ( Spitoni et al., 2015 ) fostering the conclusion that IBs results are strictly connected to processing within insula network and its relationship with body perception.

Depression and anxiety symptoms did not show a direct linear correlation neither with IBs nor IAc accuracy indexes, partially diverging from previous literature results ( Pollatos et al., 2009 ). This difference could be due either to limited sample dimension in our study or to the lack of sensitivity of the two assessment scales we used, which would be in keeping with other previous results ( Dunn et al., 2010 ). Our results indicate a poor effectiveness of BDI-II and STAI questionnaires to assess interoceptive dimensions of depression and anxiety. Dunn et al. (2010) suggested that BDI-II and STAI questionnaires may have confounding overlapping constructs, more directly connected to global severity measures and therefore they might be relatively inappropriate to measure interoceptive components. Our findings, related to a small albeit representative sample, confirmed this perspective also through a significant correlation between the scales.

To effectively assess bodily components of depression and anxiety, we therefore implemented several well validated factor structures. BDI-II was divided into two-factors connected to somatic and cognitive components of depression ( Steer et al., 1999 ; Storch et al., 2004 ). STAI was divided into four-factors that described positive and negative items of anxiety, both in state and trait conditions ( Vigneau and Cormier, 2008 ).

Consequently, we focused on the somatic factor of BDI-II and a more accurate analysis identified a not-linear negative relationship ( Dunn et al., 2007 ) between depressive somatic symptoms and IBs levels. Our results suggested that depression negatively interfered with saturation levels in the buffer promoting a hypo-saturation condition in which depressive somatic components appeared to be related to a diminished processing of high valence arousing stimuli in the right insula. These results are also supported by previous neurophysiological evidence that indicated a hypo-response ( Wiebking et al., 2015 ) along with reduction in gray matter volume of the insula ( Sprengelmeyer et al., 2011 ; Stratmann et al., 2014 ) in major depressive disorders.

In our study, anxiety measured through STAI questionnaire failed to provide statistically significant results. This could be due to the small sample size but more probably to the general construct within the scale that is primarily oriented to global severity measures rather than anxiety positive arousal symptoms ( Dunn et al., 2010 ). Following literature recommendations ( Pollatos et al., 2009 ; Dunn et al., 2010 ; Paulus and Stein, 2010 ), we nonetheless explored the interaction between somatic depressive factor and positive state anxiety factor. The interaction approached a positive statistical significance suggesting some further considerations that, nonetheless, must be considered with caution. Specifically, comorbidity between somatic depressive and anxiety symptoms appeared to have a moderately positive influence upon saturation levels in the buffer, suggesting a biological prevalence of sympathetic arousal preferentially processed in the right insula. Several authors backed this perspective that relied upon the role of high arousal stimuli in the optimal functioning of the organism ( Jänig, 2008 ; Wiech et al., 2010 ; Uddin, 2015 ) supporting the notion of an emotional advantage in perception processing for homeostatic regulatory purposes, which foster enhanced attention to bodily signals ( Ogden et al., 2015a ; Yoo and Lee, 2015 ).

Interestingly, healthy subjects did not systematically underestimate durations of audio and video stimuli. Moreover, a significant difference between IBs, audio and video accuracy indexes suggested secondary implications regarding time perception theories. Specifically, our findings indicated different pacemaker-accumulator units, connected to different sensory modalities. Audio and video indexes showed a positive significant correlation between each other, but failed to significantly correlate to interoceptive time perception indicating separated time processing pathways. Moreover, regression analysis also failed to be significant for the audio and video accuracy indexes, suggesting that audio and video time estimation probably referred to different processing circuits, partially distinct from the interoceptive system. These results are supported by recent literature ( Mioni et al., 2016 ) according to which time perception in depression showed inconclusive results ( Thones and Oberfeld, 2015 ) along with not-inductive time studies in anxiety that also provided mixed results ( Lueck, 2007 ; Brown, 2016 ).

A possible explanation for the significant difference between audio, video and IBs accuracy indexes can be related to the different time spans used, suggesting that time estimation in the range of milliseconds is not susceptible to the same psycho-physiological components that contribute to IBs index. Nonetheless, different studies used time spans within milliseconds range to identify a parasympathetic ( Ogden et al., 2015b ) and sympathetic ( Droit-Volet and Meck, 2007 ; Gil and Droit-Volet, 2011 , 2012 ; Droit-Volet et al., 2013 ; Ogden et al., 2015a ; Thones and Oberfeld, 2015 ; Yoo and Lee, 2015 ; Mioni et al., 2016 ) influence upon the internal clock. Moreover, time spans in the range from seconds to subseconds have often been considered connected to the same time perception mechanisms ( Church, 1984 ) whereas evidence from literature found no difference in time intervals as a factor ( Macar et al., 2002 ). Furthermore, evidence from computational neuroscience suggested that time estimations from millisecond to seconds rely upon the same encoding processing patterns ( Karmarkar and Buonomano, 2007 ). Karmarkar and Buonomano (2007) also suggested that short time intervals—as the lower ones in the audio and video estimation tasks—are also probably connected to a nonlinear time metric encoded in local neural networks and therefore they should be even more sensible to the psychophysiological variables that contribute to IBs index. In a similar manner, Craig suggested that the interoceptive network might “provide a basis for the human capacity to perceive and estimate time intervals in the range of seconds to subseconds” ( Craig, 2009 ) also supporting the possibility to coherently explore different time spans. This evidence suggested that time spans in milliseconds range should be sensible to alterations in bodily processing, thus excluding the duration of the stimuli as a factor and allowing the design of the study to select the most appropriate and the most sensible time intervals for each sensory modality.

Considering our results, it is therefore possible that time perception is processed differently depending on the sensory modality investigated and that time information collected by several different internal clocks are sub-sequentially merged in a global time perception awareness, composed by different elements according to their contextual salience. This hypothesis remains to be tested in future studies.

Interoceptive Buffer, Active Inference and Predictive Coding

From a more formal, predictive coding (or interoceptive inference) perspective, buffer saturation can be understood in terms of well-known mechanisms of precision (or gain) control during (Bayesian) inference. One essential role of interoceptive inference is integrating various interoceptive signals to form an estimate of the state of the body (e.g., heart rate as well as gastric and respiratory signals to assess momentary fatigue or fear), based on which the organism can take adaptive action ( Pezzulo, 2014 ; Pezzulo et al., 2015 ). Importantly, while forming this estimate, the reliability of all the interoceptive signals (as well as of prior information) must be evaluated, too; signals that have higher salience or precision (or lower uncertainty) are weighted more and have higher impact on the inference, whereas lower-precision signals have lesser impact and in some cases can be also disattended or ignored—thus implementing a form of precision (or gain) control over interoceptive processing. Within this framework, signals that are highly salient or have high behavioral significance (e.g., threats) would be plausibly afforded a high gain, hence dominating the inference and reducing the impact of other signals (aka, saturating the buffer). This is in general an adaptive mechanism, which would afford priority to the most important signals; but in some cases, it can become maladaptive. For example, expecting the environment to be too volatile might lead to over-sampling it (like, e.g., in anxiety) and to a systematic overestimation of the precision of sensory and interoceptive signals. Conversely, other pathological conditions (e.g., anorexia) may be linked to interoceptive precision down-regulation, and thus to a systematically diminished processing of stimuli arising from the body (aka, silencing one of the channels of the buffer rather than saturating it). This framework would shed light on the different ways interoceptive inference can become aberrant, due (for example) to the fallacious up- or down-regulation of the precision of interoceptive (or other) signals—and how this in turn would produce maladaptive behavior that is specific of different clinical conditions ( Friston et al., 2014 ).

Clinical Implication of Interoceptive Buffer Saturation

IBs index can provide insight regarding interoceptive alterations in apparently different conditions, nonetheless this knowledge may serve other purposes besides simple assessment. Specifically, pathological conditions with an hyper-saturated status might present alterations in bodily signals connected to an overflow of sympathetic-related stimuli in the buffer (i.e., interoceptive noise) lowering the access to other interoceptive information ( Di Lernia et al., 2016a ). Conversely, hypo-saturated conditions may be connected to a general impairment of whole stimuli processing that limited inputs (i.e., interoceptive silence) from actually reaching AIC.

If confirmed, this perspective may have important implications beyond assessment, foreseeing the concept of “interoceptive treatments”. As a matter of fact, clinical conditions (i.e., anxiety or chronic pain) characterized by an overflow of sympathetic related interoceptive stimuli (i.e., hyper-saturation) may benefit from an interoceptive parasympathetic stimulation with low variance to promote co-activation of the left insula, reducing processing in the right AIC with the ultimate goal of contrasting symptoms severity. Conversely, if a clinical condition will show hypo-saturation due to a block that impairs interoceptive information to actually reach the insula (i.e., depression or anorexia nervosa), interoceptive treatments based upon interoceptive stimuli with high variance could provide a way to foster high salience processing in the right AIC, restoring a correct access to bodily information. If confirmed, albeit highly theoretical, these perspectives can provide innovative insights in treatment fields, for several different psychopathological conditions.

Limitations

Several limitations impaired study design and results. Sample size was reduced, nonetheless consecutive sampling provided highly informative data, and literature confirmed an adequate statistical power ( Austin and Steyerberg, 2015 ; Harrell, 2015 ) related to number of subjects and statistical analyses performed.

A solely female sample ensured comparable results on somatosensory related tests ( Fillingim et al., 2009 ) and psychological assessment ( Garner et al., 1983 ; Clausen et al., 2011 ; Eshkevari et al., 2012 ) nevertheless the design of the study did not explore IBs in male population.

The study utilized audio and video stimuli as control procedures due to the fact that somatic non-interoceptive conditions (i.e., different velocities or different body locations) were not suitable within IBs design. This choice allowed us to explore time perception upon different sensory modalities. However, the absence of somatic control stimuli did not allow us to explore possible differences in somatic non-interoceptive processing. Moreover, interoceptive stimulation always presents concomitant activation of Aβ receptors ( Ackerley et al., 2014a , b ; Ogden et al., 2015b ) therefore non-interoceptive stimuli with a parasympathetic component may correlate with IBs index. These problems might be addressed by using reliable somatic controls, such as vibrational stimuli that specifically target ( Liljencrantz and Olausson, 2014 ) Pacinian corpuscles at a frequency between 150 Hz and –300 Hz ( Roudaut et al., 2012 ). Nonetheless, this kind of stimulation requires a specifically designed prototype not available during this study.

BDI-II and STAI questionnaires presented several limitations regarding construct measures, overlapping theoretical relevance, and effectiveness to measure interoceptive components ( Dunn et al., 2010 ). In our study, these limitations were partially addressed through several factor structures nonetheless a different model of anxiety and depression could provide better assessment of interoceptive dimensions. Specifically, the tripartite model of mood disorders ( Clark and Watson, 1991 ) might provide a more effective framework for interoceptive related components. This model relies upon the Mood and Anxiety Symptom Questionnaire (MASQ-S; Watson et al., 1995 ; Keogh and Reidy, 2000 ) to assess several dimensions connected to symptoms of nonspecific general distress, symptoms specific to depression and symptoms specific to anxiety. Specifically, MASQ-S subscales Anxious Arousal (17 items) and Anhedonic Depression (22 items) might provide better results compared to global severity measures reported by BDI-II and STAI. Unfortunately, Italian validation of the instrument was not available at the time of this study.

Lastly, literature suggested that belief and expectations can limit Schandry task validity to assess for interoceptive cardiac awareness ( Ring et al., 2015 ). Nonetheless, heart beat perception task ( Schandry, 1981 ) remained the most validate and most reliable instrument for IAc assessment ( Pollatos et al., 2007a ; Critchley and Garfinkel, 2015 ; Garfinkel et al., 2015 ).

Conclusion and Future Directions

Our results provided a powerful theoretical insight regarding the relationship between time perception, interoceptive processing and psycho-physiological conditions. Distortions in interoceptive time perception recorded by IBs index appeared to be function of different sympathetic and parasympathetic co-activation processes within insula cortex.

Nonetheless, different questions remain to be explored, promoting future research directions. Specifically, it will be fundamental to test IBs index proposal on different pathological conditions connected to insula deficits, such as chronic pain, anorexia nervosa and depression also comparing results to healthy subjects’ performances.

Furthermore, IBs results may support the concept of “interoceptive treatments” as clinical applications for a new non-pharmacological option to treat a variety of disorders characterized by interoceptive network alterations. These kinds of treatments, tailored upon specific dysregulations of the insula cortex, might provide powerful instruments to reduce symptoms severity in those conditions that are resistant to pharmacological medications, without any side effect or interaction with concomitant therapies ( Di Lernia et al., 2016a ; Riva et al., 2016 , 2017 ). Interoceptive treatments may therefore prove themselves an effective option to promote a balanced functioning of the organism both in clinical and healthy population, opening a brand new field of medicine and neuroscience.

Author Contributions

DDL: conceptualization, investigation, writing—original draft, hardware and software development. DDL and SS: methodology. SS, GP, EP, PC and GR: writing—review, editing and supervision.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

SS and GR were funded by the MIUR PRIN research project “Unlocking the memory of the body: Virtual Reality in Anorexia Nervosa” (201597WTTM).

• ^ On the other hand, we dismissed time production and reproduction tasks because that are usually dependent upon attention and working memory processes “rather than variation in internal clock” ( Mioni et al., 2016 ).
• ^ IBs is proposed as an assessing instrument; therefore we checked if the stimulation had any kind of effect upon subject’s temporal perception. We verified this by confronting mean estimations of the first stimulation block with mean estimations on the last stimulation block. An effect of the interoceptive stimulation would have produced variations in temporal estimation across blocks. Since we did not observe significative differences in time estimation between first and last stimuli, across all the protocol, we concluded that the stimulation itself did not have any impact on subject’s endogenous time perception.
• ^ BDI-II somatic factor quadratic transformation ( β = −0.324, p = 0.037) | Model with untransformed term R 2 = 0.461, F (4,25) = 5.337, p < 0.003, IAc β = 0.420, p = 0.01, EDI_DT β = −0.308, p = 0.05, BDI-II somatic untransformed term β = −0.136, p = 0.369, BDI-II somatic quadratic transformed term β = −0.303, p = 0.053. Residuals K-S > 0.200, S-W = 0.928.
• ^ Model with untransformed term: Audio accuracy index p = 0.611, Video accuracy index p = 0.288.

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Keywords: interoception, interoceptive buffer, C-T fibers, time perception

Citation: Di Lernia D, Serino S, Pezzulo G, Pedroli E, Cipresso P and Riva G (2018) Feel the Time. Time Perception as a Function of Interoceptive Processing. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 12:74. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2018.00074

Received: 28 October 2017; Accepted: 12 February 2018; Published: 06 March 2018.

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Copyright © 2018 Di Lernia, Serino, Pezzulo, Pedroli, Cipresso and Riva. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Daniele Di Lernia, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Discussions of the nature of time, and of various issues related to time, have always featured prominently in philosophy, but they have been especially important since the beginning of the twentieth century. This article contains a brief overview of some of the main topics in the philosophy of time—(1) fatalism; (2) reductionism and Platonism with respect to time; (3) the topology of time; (4) McTaggart’s argument; (5) the A-theory and the B-theory; (6) presentism, eternalism, and the growing block theory; (7) the 3D/4D debate about persistence; (8) the dynamic and the static theory; (9) the moving spotlight theory; (10) time travel; (11) time and physics and (12) time and rationality. We include some suggestions for further reading on each topic and a bibliography.

Note: This entry does not discuss the consciousness, perception, experience, or phenomenology of time. A historical overview and general presentation of the various views is available in the entry on temporal consciousness . Further coverage can be found in the SEP entry on the experience and perception of time . For those interested specifically in phenomenological views, see the entries on Husserl (Section 6), and Heidegger (Section 2: Being and Time).

1. Fatalism

2. reductionism and platonism with respect to time, 3. the topology of time, 4. mctaggart’s argument, 5. the a-theory and the b-theory, 6. presentism, eternalism, and the growing block theory, 7. three-dimensionalism and four-dimensionalism, 8. the dynamic and the static theory, 9. the moving spotlight theory, 10. time travel, 11. time and physics, 12. time and rationality, other internet resources, related entries.

Many logical questions about time historically arose from questions about freedom and determinism—in particular worries about fatalism. Fatalism can be understood as the doctrine that whatever will happen in the future is already unavoidable (where to say that an event is unavoidable is to say that no agent is able to prevent it from occurring). Here is a typical argument for fatalism:

The conclusion appears shocking. Future moral catastrophes are unavoidable. Every weighty decision that now feels up to you is already determined.

The argument for fatalism makes some significant metaphysical assumptions that raise more general questions about logic, time, and agency.

For example, Premise (1) assumes that propositions describing the future do not come into or go out of existence. It assumes that there are propositions now that can accurately represent every future way things might go. This is a non-trivial logical assumption. You might, for instance, think that different times becoming present and actual (like perhaps possible worlds) have different associated sets of propositions that become present and actual.

Premise (2) appears to be a fundamental principle of semantics, sometimes referred to as the Principle of Bivalence.

The rationale for premise (4) is that it appears no one is able to make a true prediction turn out false. (4) assumes that one and the same proposition does not change its truth value over time. The shockingness of the conclusion also depends on identifying meaningful agency with the capacity to make propositions come out true or false.

A proper discussion of fatalism would include a lengthy consideration of premises (1) and (4), which make important assumptions about the nature of propositional content and the nature of agency. That would take us beyond the scope of this article. For our purposes, it is important to note that many writers have been motivated by this kind of fatalist argument to deny (2), the Principle of Bivalence. According to this line, there are many propositions—namely, propositions about events that are both in the future and contingent—that are neither true nor false right now. Consider the proposition that you will have lunch tomorrow. Perhaps that proposition either has no truth value right now, or else has a third truth value: indeterminate. When the relevant time comes, and you either have lunch or don’t, then the proposition will come to be either true or false, and from then on that proposition will forever retain that determinate truth value.

This strategy for rejecting fatalism is sometimes referred to as the “Open Future” response. The Open Future response presupposes that a proposition can have a truth value, but only temporarily—truth values for complete propositions can change as time passes and the world itself changes. This raises further questions about the correct way to link up propositions, temporal passage and truth values. For example, which of the following formulas expresses a genuine proposition about the present?

Tensed Proposition: “Sullivan is eating a burrito”.

Tenseless Proposition: “Sullivan eats a burrito at <insert present time stamp>”.

The tensed proposition will no longer be true when Sullivan finishes her lunch. So it has, at best, a temporary truth value. The tenseless proposition expresses something like “Sullivan eats a burrito at 3pm on July 20th 2019”. That proposition is always true.

Some philosophers argue that only the latter, eternally true kind of proposition could make sense of how we use propositions to reason over time. We need propositions to have stable truth values if we are to use them as the contents of thoughts and communication. Other philosophers—particularly those who believe that reality itself changes over time—think that tensed propositions are needed to accurately reason about the world. We’ll return to these issues in Section 4 and Section 5 .

Suggestions for Further Reading: Aristotle, De Interpretatione , Ch. 9; Barnes and Cameron 2009; Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy , Book V; Crisp 2007; Evans 1985; Lewis 1986; Markosian 1995; McCall 1994; Miller 2005; Richard 1981; Sullivan 2014; Taylor 1992; Torre 2011; Van Inwagen 1983.

What if one day things everywhere ground to a halt? What if birds froze in mid-flight, people froze in mid-sentence, and planets and subatomic particles alike froze in mid-orbit? What if all change, throughout the entire universe, completely ceased for a period of, say, one year? Is such a thing possible?

If the answer to this last question is “yes”—if it is possible for there to be time without change—then time is in some important sense independent of the events within time. Other ways of investigating whether time is independent of the events within time include asking whether all of the physical processes that happen in time could happen at a faster or slower rate, and asking whether all events could have happened slightly earlier or later in time. After all, if every physical process could suddenly happen twice as fast, or if every event could take place slightly earlier or later in time, then it follows that in some important sense time can remain the same even if the way that events are distributed in time changes wholesale.

Aristotle and Leibniz, among others, have argued that time is not independent of the events that occur in time. This view is typically called either “reductionism with respect to time” or “relationism with respect to time”, since according to this view, all talk that appears to be about time can somehow be reduced to talk about temporal relations among things and events. The opposing view, normally referred to either as “Platonism with respect to time” or “substantivalism with respect to time” or “absolutism with respect to time”, has been defended by Plato, Newton, and others. On this view, time is like an empty container into which things and events may be placed; but it is a container that is independent of what (if anything) is placed in it.

Another way to present this distinction is to say that those like Plato and Newton who think that time is independent of the events that occur in time believe in “absolute time”. Those like Aristotle and Leibniz, who think that time is not independent of the events that occur in time, deny the existence of absolute time, though they still endorse “relative time”, where relative time is nothing over and above the temporal relations between events.

These views about time are closely connected to views about space and about motion. Most obviously, these views about time have straightforward spatial analogues—one may be a substantivalist about space (and thus endorse the existence of absolute space in addition to spatial relations between things), or one may be a relationist about space (and thus deny the existence of absolute space). Substantivalism and relationism about time have traditionally been taken to stand or fall with their spatial counterparts. In addition, the choice between substantivalism and relationism about space and time has consequences for your theory of motion. If you are a relationist about space and time then you must also be a relationist about motion: all motion is motion relative to something. If you are a substantivalist about space and time, you will endorse, in addition to relative motion, the notion of absolute motion, where absolute motion is motion relative to absolute space and time. If you are a substantivalist, in addition to facts about whether and how fast a train car is moving relative to the track, whether and how fast it is moving relative to the cars, and so on, there will also be a fact about whether and how fast the train car is really moving—whether and how fast it is moving relative to absolute space and time.

Why would someone endorse the existence of absolute time? One reason is that the empty container metaphor has a lot of intuitive appeal. Another reason is that some philosophers have thought that there must be such a thing as absolute motion—as opposed to merely relative motion—in order to explain certain physical phenomena, like the forces felt during acceleration. Newton had an especially famous argument along these lines involving a spinning bucket of water—the entry on Newton’s views on space, time , and motion has a careful discussion of this argument.

Why would someone deny the existence of absolute time? Some relationists have put forward arguments that are supposed to show that absolute space and time are philosophically problematic in some important way. Perhaps most famously, Leibniz argued that the existence of absolute space or time would lead to violations of the principle of sufficient reason and violations of the identity of indiscernibles.

In order to see why, consider two ways of describing the way things could be. On the one hand, everything is as it actually is. On the other, every event happens one second later than it actually does, but is otherwise exactly the same. If there is such a thing as absolute time then these two descriptions would pick out distinct possible worlds. But this, Leibniz claimed, would violate the principle of sufficient reason. For given that the actual world and the one-second-late world are exactly the same except for where things are located in absolute time, there could not (at least according to Leibniz) be any reason why one exists rather than the other. Moreover, Leibniz claimed, the actual world and the one-second-late world are indistinguishable; so if they were in fact distinct possible worlds, that would violate the principle that if two things are indistinguishable, then they are identical.

Leibniz’s arguments are examples of arguments that attempt to identify something philosophically problematic with absolute time and space. Perhaps more generally, many philosophers have been moved by the idea that even if absolute time and space are not problematic in a way that makes them unacceptable, they are still the kinds of things that we should do without if we can. This kind of attitude can be motivated by a straightforward kind of parsimony—we should always make do with the fewest types of entities possible. Or it can be motivated by a more specific worry about the nature of absolute space and time. You might, for instance, be especially loath to admit unobservable entities into your ontology—you are willing to admit them if you must, but you would rather eliminate them wherever possible. As absolute space and time are unobservable, someone who endorses this attitude will be inclined to think there are no such things.

Suggestions for Further Reading : Alexander 1956; Ariew 2000; Arntzenius 2012; Coope 2001; Mitchell 1993; Newton, Philosophical Writings ; Newton-Smith 1980; Shoemaker 1969.

It’s natural to think that time can be represented by a line. But a line has a shape. What shape should we give to the line that represents time? This is a question about the topology, or structure, of time.

One natural way to answer our question is to say that time should be represented by a single, straight, non-branching, continuous line that extends without end in each of its two directions. This is the “standard topology” for time. But for each of the features attributed to time in the standard topology, two interesting questions arise: (a) does time in fact have that feature? and (b) if time does have the feature in question, is this a necessary or a contingent fact about time?

Questions about the topology of time appear to be closely connected to the issue of Platonism versus relationism with respect to time. For if relationism is true, then it seems likely that time’s topological features will depend on contingent facts about the relations among things and events in the world, whereas if Platonism is true, so that time exists independently of whatever is in time, then time will presumably have its topological properties as a matter of necessity. But even if we assume that Platonism is true, it’s not clear exactly what topological properties should be attributed to time.

Consider the question of whether time should be represented by a line without a beginning (so a line, rather than a line segment). Aristotle has argued (roughly) that time cannot have a beginning on the grounds that in order for time to have a beginning, there must be a first moment of time, but that in order to count as a moment of time, that allegedly first moment would have to come between an earlier period of time and a later period of time, which is inconsistent with its being the first moment of time. (Aristotle argues in the same way that time cannot have an end.)

Aristotle’s argument may or may not be a good one, but even if it is unsound, many people will feel, purely on intuitive grounds, that the idea of time having a beginning (or an end) just does not make sense. And here we have an excellent illustration of what is at stake in the controversy over whether time has its topological properties as a contingent matter or as a matter of necessity. For suppose we come to have excellent evidence that the universe itself had a beginning in time. (This seems like the kind of thing that could be supported by empirical evidence in cosmology.) This would still leave open the question of whether the beginning of the universe occurred after an infinitely long period of “empty” time, or, instead, coincided with the beginning of time itself. There are interesting and plausible arguments for each of these positions.

It is also worth asking whether time must be represented by a single line. Perhaps we should take seriously the possibility of time’s consisting of multiple time streams, each one of which is isolated from each other, so that every moment of time stands in temporal relations to other moments in its own time stream, but does not bear any temporal relations to any moment from another time stream. Likewise we can ask whether time could correspond to a branching line (perhaps to allow for the possibility of time travel or to model an open future), or to a closed loop, or to a discontinuous line. And we can also wonder whether one of the two directions of time is in some way privileged, in a way that makes time itself asymmetrical. (We say more about this last option in particular in the section on time and physics.)

Suggestions for Further Reading: (1) On the beginning and end of time: Aristotle, Physics , Bk. VIII; Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason (especially pp. 75ff); Newton-Smith 1980, Ch. V. (2) On the linearity of time: Newton-Smith 1980, Ch. III; Swinburne 1966, 1968. (3) On the direction of time: Price 1994, 1996; Savitt 1995; and Sklar 1974. (4) On all of these topics: Newton-Smith 1980.

In a famous paper published in 1908, J.M.E. McTaggart argued that there is in fact no such thing as time, and that the appearance of a temporal order to the world is a mere appearance. Other philosophers before and since (including, especially, F.H. Bradley) have argued for the same conclusion. We will focus here only on McTaggart’s argument against the reality of time, which has been by far the most influential.

McTaggart begins his argument by distinguishing two ways in which positions in time can be ordered. First, he says, positions in time can be ordered according to their possession of properties like being two days future, being one day future, being present, being one day past, etc. These properties are often referred to now as “ A properties” because McTaggart calls the series of times ordered by these properties “the A series”. But he says that positions in time can also be ordered by two-place relations like two days earlier than, one day earlier than, simultaneous with, etc. These relations are now often called “ B relations” because McTaggart calls the series of times ordered by these relations “the B series”.

McTaggart argues that the B series alone does not constitute a proper time series; the A series is essential to time. His reason for this is that he assumes change is essential to time, and the B series without the A series does not involve genuine change (since B series positions are forever “fixed”, whereas A series positions are constantly changing).

McTaggart also argues that the A series is inherently contradictory. For, he says, the different A properties are incompatible with one another. No time can be both future and past, for example. Nevertheless, he insists, each time in the A series must possess all of the different A properties, since a time that is future will be present and then will be past. McTaggart concludes that, since neither the A-series nor the B-series can order the time series, time is unreal.

One response to this argument that McTaggart anticipates involves claiming that it’s not true of any time, t , that t is both future and past. Rather, the objection goes, we must say that it was future at some moment of past time and will be past at some moment of future time. But this objection fails, according to McTaggart, because the additional times that are invoked in order to explain t ’s possession of the incompatible A properties must themselves possess all of the same A properties (as must any further times invoked on account of these additional times, and so on ad infinitum ). Thus, according to McTaggart, we never resolve the original contradiction inherent in the A series, but, instead, merely generate an infinite regress of more and more contradictions.

McTaggart’s argument has had staying power because it organizes crucial debates about the metaphysics of temporal passage, because it hints at how those debates connect to further debates about where evidence for the time series and the nature of change come from, and because the difference between A-theoretic and B-theoretic approaches to the debate has continued in the intervening century.

Suggestions for Further Reading: Bradley 1893; Dyke 2002; McTaggart 1908; Mellor 1998; Prior 1967, 1968.

In Section 1 , we introduced the distinction between a tensed proposition and a tenseless proposition. Tensed propositions can fully and accurately describe the world, but nevertheless change truth value over time. Tenseless propositions, on the other hand, are always true or always false—they reference a particular time in the proposition and never change. Propositions represent ways reality could be. So, which view of propositions we adopt depends on what we think it means for reality itself to undergo change.

In section 4 , we discussed McTaggart’s distinction between time conceived of as a B-series (events ordered by which come before and which come after) and time conceived of as an A-series (events ordered by which are present, which are past, and which are future). Though not particularly creative as names, the A/B distinction has stuck around as a way of classifying theories of change.

B-theorists think all change can be described in before-after terms. They typically portray spacetime as a spread-out manifold with events occurring at different locations in the manifold (often assuming a substantivalist picture). Living in a world of change means living in a world with variation in this manifold. To say that a certain autumn leaf changed color is just to say that the leaf is green in an earlier location of the manifold and red in a later location. The locations, in these cases, are specific times in the manifold. And all of the metaphysically important facts about change can be captured by tenseless propositions like “The leaf is red at October 7, 2019”. “The leaf is not red at September 7, 2019”.

A-theorists, on the other hand, believe that at least some important forms of change require classifying events as past, present or future. And accurately describing this kind of change requires some tensed propositions—there is a way reality is (now, presently) which is complete but was different in the past and also will be different in the future. These tensed propositions also explain why we tend to attribute significance to the past-present-future distinction. For example, you might think the A-theorist is in a better position to explain why we care whether a horrible event is already in the past versus still in the future. Some A-theorists will argue that we aren’t concerned with location—we care that the event is over with in reality.

Note, also, there is a significant range of views within the A-theory camp about whether there is a spacetime manifold (Moving Spotlighters think there is), or whether only present events are real (the presentist view), or whether only present and past events are real (the Growing Block view). We say more about all of these views below. A-theorists also debate whether objects themselves undergo A-theoretic change or whether it is only entire regions of spacetime that change this way.

A-theorists and B-theorists appeal to different sources of evidence for their different views of passage. A-theorists typically emphasize how psychologically we seem to perceive a world of robust passage or “flow” of time. In physics, the laws of thermodynamics seem to imply a strong past-to-future direction to time. And quantum mechanics seems to identify an important sense of simultaneity, which could be identified with presentness (see section 11 below). Finally many commonsense ways of thinking of change seem to rely on A-theory descriptions of passage. For instance, they will use the fact that we care so much about whether bad events are past as evidence that there are ineliminable tensed propositions and those propositions represent ineliminable A-properties.

B-theorists typically emphasize how special relativity eliminates the past/present/future distinction from physical models of space and time. Thus what seems like an awkward way to express facts about time in ordinary English is actually much closer to the way we express facts about time in physics. Moreover, thinking of change in tenseless terms makes it easier to describe in a logically consistent way how objects survive change—objects have properties only relative to particular times, so there is no worry about attributing absolutely inconsistent properties to anything. We’ll consider some of these arguments in more detail in the remaining sections of this entry, as we consider more specific variations on A-theories and B-theories of time.

Suggestions for Further Reading: For general discussion of The A theory and The B theory: Emery 2017; Le Poidevin 1998; Le Poidevin and McBeath 1993; Markosian 1993; Maudlin 2007 (especially Chapter 4); Mellor 1998; Paul 2010; Prior 1959 [1976], 1962 [1968], 1967, 1968, 1970, 1996; Sider 2001; Skow 2009; Smart 1963, 1949; Smith 1993; Sullivan 2012a; Williams 1951; Zimmerman 2005; Zwart 1976.

A further question that you might ask about time is an ontological question. Does whether something is past, present, or future make a difference to whether it exists? And how do these ontological theses connect to debates about the A-theory and the B-theory?

According to presentism, only present objects exist. More precisely, presentism is the view that, necessarily, it is always true that only present objects exist. Even more precisely, no objects exist in time without being present (abstract objects might exist outside of time). (Note that some writers have used the name differently, and unless otherwise indicated, what is meant here by “present” is temporally present, as opposed to spatially present.) According to presentism, if we were to make an accurate list of all the things that exist—i.e., a list of all the things that our most unrestricted quantifiers range over—there would be not a single merely past or merely future object on the list. Thus, you and the Taj Mahal would be on the list, but neither Socrates nor any future Martian outposts would be included. (Assuming, that is, both (i) that each person is identical to his or her body, and (ii) that Socrates’s body ceased to be present—thereby going out of existence, according to presentism—shortly after he died. Those who reject the first of these assumptions should simply replace the examples in this article involving allegedly non-present people with appropriate examples involving the non-present bodies of those people.) And it is not just Socrates and future Martian outposts, either—the same goes for any other putative object that lacks the property of being present. No such objects exist, according to presentism.

There are different ways to oppose presentism—that is, to defend the view that at least some non-present objects exist. One version of non-presentism is eternalism, which says that objects from both the past and the future exist. According to eternalism, non-present objects like Socrates and future Martian outposts exist now, even though they are not currently present. We may not be able to see them at the moment, on this view, and they may not be in the same space-time vicinity that we find ourselves in right now, but they should nevertheless be on the list of all existing things.

It might be objected that there is something odd about attributing to a non-presentist the claim that Socrates exists now, since there is a sense in which that claim is clearly false. In order to forestall this objection, let us distinguish between two senses of “ x exists now”. In one sense, which we can call the temporal location sense, this expression is synonymous with “ x is present”. The non-presentist will admit that, in the temporal location sense of “ x exists now”, it is true that no non-present objects exist now. But in the other sense of “ x exists now”, which we can call the ontological sense, to say that “ x exists now” is just to say that x is now in the domain of our most unrestricted quantifiers. Using the ontological sense of “exists”, we can talk about something existing in a perfectly general sense, without presupposing anything about its temporal location. When we attribute to non-presentists the claim that non-present objects like Socrates exist right now, we commit non-presentists only to the claim that these non-present objects exist now in the ontological sense (the one involving the most unrestricted quantifiers).

According to the eternalist, temporal location does not affect ontology. But according to a somewhat less popular version of non-presentism, temporal location does matter when it comes to ontology, because only objects that are either past or present exist. On this view, which is often called the growing block theory, the correct ontology is always increasing in size, as more and more things are added on to the leading “present” edge (temporally speaking). (Note, however, that the growing block theory does not involve any commitment to four-dimensionalism as discussed in section 7 . In this way, the name “growing block” is somewhat misleading and the view is probably better described as the growing universe theory.) Both presentism and the growing block theory are versions of the A-theory.

Despite the claim by some presentists that theirs is the commonsense view, it is pretty clear that there are some major problems facing presentism (and, to a lesser extent, the growing block theory; but in what follows we will focus on the problems facing presentism). One problem has to do with what appears to be perfectly meaningful talk about non-present objects, such as Socrates and the year 3000. If there really are no non-present objects, then it is hard to see what we are referring to when we use expressions such as “Socrates” and “the year 3000”.

Another problem for the presentist has to do with relations involving non-present objects. It is natural to say, for example, that Abraham Lincoln was taller than Napoleon Bonaparte, and that World War II was a cause of the end of The Depression. But how can we make sense of such talk, if there are no non-present objects to be the relata of those relations?

A third problem for the presentist has to do with the very plausible principle that for every truth, there is a truth-maker—something whose existence suffices for the truth of the proposition or statement. If you are a presentist, it is hard to see what the truth-makers could be for truths such as that there were dinosaurs and that there will be Martian outposts.

Finally, the presentist, in virtue of being an A-theorist, must deal with the arguments against the A-theory that were mentioned above, including especially the worry that the A-theory is incompatible with special relativity. We will discuss these physics-based objections below.

Suggestions for Further Reading: Adams 1986; Bourne 2006; Bigelow 1996; Emery 2020; Hinchliff 1996; Ingram 2016; Keller and Nelson 2001; Markosian 2004, 2013; McCall 1994; Rini and Cresswell 2012; Sider 1999, 2001; Sullivan 2012b; Tooley 1997; Zimmerman 1996, 1998.

In Section 4 and Section 5 we saw that there have been two main theories developed in response to McTaggart’s Argument: The A-theory and The B-theory. Then, in Section 6 we saw that there are two main ways of thinking about the relation between ontology and time: presentism and eternalism. (There was also a third way, The Growing Block Theory, which we will mainly set aside for the sake of simplicity in this section.) Two main ways of thinking about time emerge from these discussions. On the one hand, A-theorists and presentists think that our pre-theoretical idea of time as flowing or passing, and thus being very different from the dimensions of space, corresponds to something objective and real. B-theorists and eternalists, on the other hand, reject the idea of time’s passage and instead embrace the idea of time as being a dimension like space. There is another important way in which philosophers in the second camp (the B-theory/eternalist camp) think time is like space, and it has to do with how objects and events persist over time. The debate typically centers around the doctrine of “temporal parts”, which those in the B-theory/eternalist camp tend to accept while those in the A-theory/presentist camp tend to reject.

To get an intuitive idea of what temporal parts are supposed to be, think of a film strip depicting you as you walk across a room. It is made up of many frames, and each frame shows you at a moment of time. Now picture cutting the frames, and stacking them, one on top of another. Finally, imagine turning the stack sideways, so that the two-dimensional images of you are all right-side-up. Each image of you in one of these frames represents a temporal part of you, in a specific position, at a particular location in space, at a single moment of time. And what you are, on this way of thinking, is the fusion of all these temporal parts. You are a “spacetime worm” that curves through the four-dimensional manifold known as spacetime . Moreover, on this view, what it is to have a momentary property at a time is to have a temporal part at the time that has the property in question. So you are sitting right now in virtue of the fact that your current temporal part is sitting.

The doctrine of temporal parts that B-theorists and eternalists tend to like can be stated like this:

Four-Dimensionalism: Any physical object that is located at different times has a different temporal part for each moment at which it is located.

On this view you have a temporal part right now, which is a three-dimensional “time slice” of you. And you have a different temporal part at noon yesterday, but no temporal parts in the year 1900 (since you are not located at any time in 1900). Also on this view, the physical object that is you is a fusion of all of your many temporal parts. (Note: there is a variation on the standard four-dimensional view, which is sometimes called “the worm view”. The variation, known as “the stage view”, holds that names and personal pronouns normally refer, not to entire fusions of temporal parts but, rather, to the individual person-stages, each of which is located at just an instant of time, and each of which counts as a person, rather than a mere part of a person).

The opposing view is three-dimensionalism, which is just the denial of the claim that temporally extended physical objects must have temporal parts. Here is a formulation of the view:

Three-Dimensionalism: Any physical object that is located at different times is wholly present at each moment at which it is located.

According to three-dimensionalism, the thing that was doing whatever you were doing at noon yesterday was you. It was you who was doing that, and now you are doing something different (namely, reading this sentence). So the relation between “you then” and “you now” is identity . According to four-dimensionalism, on the other hand, the thing that was doing whatever you were doing at noon yesterday was an earlier temporal part of the thing that is you, and the thing that is doing what you are doing now is the present temporal part of you. The relation between “you then” and “you now” is the temporal counterpart relation. (This is similar to the relation between your left hand and your right hand, which is the spatial counterpart relation. Your two hands are distinct parts of a bigger thing that contains them both.)

David Lewis, one of the main proponents of four-dimensionalism, suggests that the principal reason to accept the view is to solve what he calls “the problem of temporary intrinsics”. How can a single thing—Lewis, for example—have different intrinsic properties—like being straight, while he is standing, and then being bent, while seated—at different times? Not by standing in different relations—the being straight at and being bent at relations—to different times, he argues. (Since, he says, being straight and being bent are genuine properties rather than disguised relations.) And not in virtue of there being only one reality—such as the time when Lewis is bent—so that reality consists of Lewis, and every other thing, being the way it is now and not any other way. (For Lewis points out that we all believe we have a past and a future, in addition to a present.) So Lewis suggests that the best answer to the question about how a single thing can have different intrinsic properties at different times is that such an object has different temporal parts which themselves have the different intrinsic properties.

There is, however, a natural three-dimensionalist response to this argument. It involves appealing to a certain way of thinking about time, truth, and propositions that we touched on briefly in Section 1 , namely, the idea that propositions are in some way “tensed” as opposed to “tenseless”. Here is a way to formulate the relevant semantic thesis:

The Tensed Conception of Semantics

• Propositions have truth values at times rather than simpliciter and can, in principle, change their truth values over time.
• We cannot eliminate verbal tenses like is , was , and will be from an ideal language.

On this view, a sentence like “Sullivan is eating a burrito” expresses a proposition that used to be true, but is false now.

The alternative to the tensed conception of semantics is the tenseless conception of semantics . On the latter view, an utterance of a sentence like “Sullivan is eating a burrito” expresses a proposition about a B-relation between events—it says that Sullivan’s eating a burrito is simultaneous with the utterance itself (or perhaps with the time of the utterance). Here is a way of stating this view:

The Tenseless Conception of Semantics

• Propositions have truth values simpliciter rather than at times, and so cannot change their truth values over time.
• We can in principle eliminate verbal tenses like is , was , and will be from an ideal language.

Consideration of Lewis’s argument from temporary intrinsics has shown that a three-dimensionalist should probably endorse the tensed conception of semantics, in order to account for changing truths about the world and its objects. And once we have seen this, it also becomes clear that A-theorists, presentists, and proponents of the growing block theory all have similar reasons for adopting the tensed conception of semantics. For the A-theorist is committed to there being changing truths about which times and events are future, which are present, and which are past; and presentists and growing block theorists are both committed to there being changing truths about what exists.

Suggestions for Further Reading: Hawley 2004 [2020]; Lewis 1986; Sider 2001; Thomson 1983; van Inwagen 1990

Many of the above considerations—especially those about McTaggart’s Argument; the A-theory and the B-theory; presentism, eternalism, and the growing block theory; and the dispute between three-dimensionalism and four-dimensionalism—suggest that there are, generally speaking, two very distinct ways of thinking about the nature of time. The first is the Static Theory of Time, according to which time is like space, and there is no such thing as the passage of time; and the second is the Dynamic Theory of Time, according to which time is very different from space, and the passage of time is a real phenomenon. These two ways of thinking about time are not the only such ways, but they correspond to the two most popular combinations of views about time to be found in the literature, which are arguably the most natural combinations of views on these issues. In this section we will spell out these two popular combinations, mainly as a way to synthesize much of the preceding material, and also to allow the reader to appreciate in a big-picture way how the different disputes about the nature of time are normally taken to be interrelated.

The guiding thought behind the Static Theory of Time is that time is like space. Here are six ways in which this thought is typically spelled out. (Note: The particular combination of these six theses is a natural and popular combination of related claims. But it is not inevitable. It is also possible to mix and match from among the tenets of the Static Theory and its rival, the Dynamic Theory.)

The Static Theory of Time

• The universe is spread out in four similar dimensions, which together make up a unified, four-dimensional manifold, appropriately called spacetime .
• Any physical object that is located at different times has a different temporal part for each moment at which it is located.
• There are no genuine and irreducible A-properties; all talk that appears to be about A-properties can be correctly analyzed in terms of B-relations. Likewise, the temporal facts about the world include facts about B-relations, but they do not include any facts about A-properties.
• The correct ontology does not change over time, and it always includes objects from every region of spacetime.
• Propositions have truth values simpliciter rather than at times, and so cannot change their truth values over time. Also, we can in principle eliminate verbal tenses like is , was , and will be from an ideal language.
• There is no dynamic aspect to time; time does not pass.

Static Theorists of course admit that time seems special to us, and that it seems to pass. But they insist that this is just a feature of consciousness—of how we perceive the world—and not a feature of reality that is independent of us.

The second of the main ways of thinking about time is the Dynamic Theory of Time. The guiding thought behind this way of thinking is that time is very different from space. Here are six ways in which this thought is typically spelled out. (Note: The particular combination of these six theses is a natural and popular combination of related claims. But, like the Static Theory, it is not inevitable. It is also possible to mix and match from among the tenets of the Dynamic Theory and the Static Theory.)

The Dynamic Theory of Time

• The universe is spread out in the three dimensions of physical space, and time, like modality, is a completely different kind of dimension from the spatial dimensions.
• Any physical object that is located at different times is wholly present at each moment at which it is located.
• There are genuine and irreducible A-properties, which cannot be correctly analyzed in terms of B-relations. The temporal facts about the world include ever-changing facts involving A-properties, including facts about which times are past, which time is present, and which times are future.
• The correct ontology changes over time, and it is always true that only present objects exist.
• Propositions have truth values at times rather than simpliciter and can, in principle, change their truth values over time. Also, we cannot eliminate verbal tenses like is , was , and will be from an ideal language.
• The passage of time is a real and mind-independent phenomenon.

Opponents of the Dynamic Theory (and sometimes proponents as well) like to characterize the theory using the metaphor of a moving spotlight that slides along the temporal dimension, brightly illuminating just one moment of time, the present, while the future is a foggy region of potential and the past is a shadowy realm of what has been. The moving spotlight is an intuitively appealing way to capture the central idea behind the Dynamic Theory, but in the end, it is just a metaphor. What the metaphor represents is the idea that A-properties like being future , being present , and being past are objective and metaphysically significant properties of times, events, and things. Also, the metaphor of the moving spotlight represents the fact that, according to the Dynamic Theory, each time undergoes a somewhat peculiar but inexorable process, sometimes called temporal becoming . It goes from being in the distant future to the near future, has a brief moment of glory in the present, and then recedes forever further and further into the past.

Despite its being intuitively appealing (especially for Static Theorists, who see it as a caricature of the Dynamic Theory), the moving spotlight metaphor has a major drawback, according to some proponents of the Dynamic Theory: it encourages us to think of time as a fourth dimension, akin to the dimensions of space. For many proponents of the Dynamic Theory, this way of thinking—“spatializing time”—is a mistake. Instead, we should take seriously the ways that time seems completely different from the dimensions of space—for instance, time’s apparent directionality, and the distinctive ways that time governs experience.

Suggestions for Further Reading: Hawley 2001; Lewis 1986; Markosian 1993; Markosian 2004; Markosian (forthcoming); Moss 2012; Price 1977; Prior 1967; Prior 1968; Sider 2001; Smart 1949; Sullivan 2012a; Thomson 1983; and Williams 1951.

Above we mentioned that a metaphor sometimes used to characterize the Dynamic Theory is that of a moving spotlight that slides along the temporal dimension and that is such that only objects within the spotlight exist. A similar sort of metaphor can also be used to characterize the Moving Spotlight Theory, which is an interesting hybrid of the Static Theory and the Dynamic Theory. Like the Static Theory, the Moving Spotlight Theory incorporates the idea of spacetime as a unified manifold, with objects spread out along the temporal dimension in virtue of having different temporal parts at different times, and with past, present, and future parts of the manifold all equally real. But like the Dynamic Theory, it incorporates the thesis that A-properties are objective and irreducible properties, as well as the idea that time genuinely passes. The metaphor that characterizes the Moving Spotlight Theory is one on which there is a moving spotlight that slides along the temporal dimension and that is such that only things that are within the spotlight are present (but things that are outside the spotlight still exist).

Thus the Moving Spotlight Theory is an example of an eternalist A-theory that subscribes to the dynamic thesis. Unlike presentist or growing block theories, spotlighters deny that any objects come into or out of existence. Unlike the B-theories, however, spotlighters think that there is an important kind of change that cannot be described just as mere variation in a spacetime manifold. Spotlighters think instead that there is a spacetime manifold, but one particular region of the manifold is objectively distinguished—the present. And this distinction is only temporary—facts about which region of spacetime count as the present change over time. For example, right now a region of 2019 is distinguished as present. But in a year, a region of 2020 will enjoy this honor. The term “moving spotlight theory” was coined by C.D. Broad—himself a growing blocker—because he thought this view of time treated passage on the metaphor of a policeman’s “bull’s eye” scanning regions in sequence and focusing attention on their contents.

Just as there are different understandings of presentism and eternalism, there are different versions of the moving spotlight theory. Some versions think that even though the present is distinguished, there is still an important sense in which the past and future are concrete. Other versions (like Cameron 2015) treat the spotlight theory more like a variant of presentism—past and future objects still exist, but their intrinsic properties are radically unlike those of present objects. Fragmentalists (see Fine 2005) think that there is a spacetime manifold but that every point in the manifold has its own type of objective presentness, which defines a past and future relative to the point.

Why be a spotlighter? Advocates think it combines some of the best features of eternalism while still making sense of how we seem to perceive a world of substantive passage. It also inherits some of the counterintuitive consequences of eternalism (i.e., believing dinosaurs still exist) and the more complicated logic of the A-theories (i.e., it requires rules for reasoning about tensed propositions involving the spotlight).

Suggestions for Further Reading: Broad 1923; Cameron 2015; Fine 2005; Hawley 2004 [2020]; Lewis 1986 (especially Chapter 4.2); Sider 2001; Skow 2015; Thomson 1983; Van Inwagen 1990; Zimmerman 1998.

We are all familiar with time travel stories, and there are few among us who have not imagined traveling back in time to experience some particular period or meet some notable person from the past. But is time travel even possible?

One question that is relevant here is whether time travel is permitted by the prevailing laws of nature. This is presumably a matter of empirical science (or perhaps the correct philosophical interpretation of our best theories from the empirical sciences). But a further question, and one that falls squarely under the heading of philosophy, is whether time travel is permitted by the laws of logic and metaphysics. For it has been argued that various absurdities follow from the supposition that time travel is (logically and metaphysically) possible. Here is an example of such an argument:

Another argument that might be raised against the possibility of time travel depends on the claim that presentism is true. For if presentism is true, then neither past nor future objects exist. And in that case, it is hard to see how anyone could travel to the past or the future.

A third argument, against the possibility of time travel to the past, has to do with the claim that backward causation is impossible. For if there can be no backward causation, then it is not possible that, for example, your pushing the button in your time machine in 2020 can cause your appearance, seemingly out of nowhere, in, say, 1900. And yet it seems that any story about time travel to the past would have to include such backward causation, or else it would not really be a story about time travel.

Despite the existence of these and other arguments against the possibility of time travel, there may also be problems associated with the claim that time travel is not possible. For one thing, many scientists and philosophers believe that the actual laws of physics are in fact compatible with time travel. And for another thing, as we mentioned at the beginning of this section, we often think about time travel stories; but when we do so, those thoughts do not have the characteristic, glitchy feeling that is normally associated with considering an impossible story. To get a sense of the relevant glitchy feeling, consider this story: Once upon a time there was a young girl, and two plus two was equal to five . When you try to consider that literary gem, you mainly have a feeling that something has gone wrong (you immediately want to respond, “No, it wasn’t”), and the source of that feeling seems to be the metaphysical impossibility of the story being told. But nothing like this happens when you consider a story about time travel (especially if it is one of the logically consistent stories about time travel, such as the one depicted in the movie Los Cronocrímenes (Timecrimes) ). One task facing the philosopher who claims that time travel is impossible, then, is to explain the existence of a large number of well-known stories that appear to be specifically about time travel, and that do not cause any particular cognitive dissonance.

Suggestions for Further Reading: Bernstein 2015, 2017; Dyke 2005; Earman 1995; Markosian (forthcoming); Meiland 1974; Miller 2017; Sider 2001; Thorne 1994; Vihvelin 1996; Yourgrau 1999.

Our best physical theories have often had implications for the nature of time, and by and large, it is assumed that philosophers working on time need to be sensitive to the claims of contemporary physics. One example of the interaction between physics and philosophy of time that was mentioned in Section 2 was Newton’s bucket argument, which used the observed effects of acceleration to argue for absolute motion (and thus absolute space and time). Another example mentioned above was the worry that the A-theory conflicted with special relativity. The latter has proved especially influential in contemporary metaphysics of time and so deserves some further discussion.

According to standard presentations of special relativity, there is no fact of the matter as to whether two spatially separated events happen at the same time. This principle, which is known as the relativity of simultaneity , creates serious difficulty for the A-theory in general and for presentism in particular. After all, it follows from the relativity of simultaneity that there is no fact of the matter as to what is present, and according to any A-theory there is an important distinction between what is present and what is merely past or future. According to presentism, that distinction is one of existence—only what is present exists.

A different way of describing the relativity of simultaneity involves the combination of two claims:

• the claim that whether two spatially separated events happen at the same time depends on the reference frame you use to describe them, and
• the claim that no reference frame is privileged.

This way of putting the relativity of simultaneity requires a new bit of technical jargon: the notion of a reference frame. For our purposes, a reference frame is nothing more than a coordinate system that is used to identify the same point in space at different times. Someone on a steadily moving train, for instance, will naturally use a reference frame that is different from someone who is standing on the station platform, since it is natural for the person on the train to think of themselves as stationary, while for the person on the platform it seems obvious that they are moving.

The reason why it is worth introducing this bit of jargon is that once you present the relativity of simultaneity as the combination of claims (i) and (ii), you can also note that the motivation for claim (i) is importantly different from the motivation for claim (ii). The motivation for (i) is a series of empirical results at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, including, most famously, the Michelson-Morley experiment. No one should deny this part of the relativity of simultaneity. The motivation for (ii), by contrast, is less often explicitly discussed, and seems to involve the commitment to some sort of general extra-empirical principle like “eliminate unobservable entities whenever possible”, or “eliminate excess spacetime structure whenever possible”. This means that presentists and other A-theorists have a way of avoiding the worry from relativity without any conflict with empirical results—they can reject whatever extra-empirical principle motivates (ii). Whether you think the costs associated with this move are worth paying will depend on your degree of commitment to the A-theory, what exactly you think of the relevant extra-empirical principle supporting (ii), and whether that principle plays an important role elsewhere in physics.

It is often said that philosophers should defer to physics with respect to what the latter says about time. But the interaction between the A-theory and special relativity illustrates one way in which that claim is more complicated than it first appears. Must philosophers respect both the empirical and the extra-empirical aspects of our best physical theories? Or is it sufficient that they respect the former?

Another way in which this assumption is complicated is that different physical theories often seem to imply different things about the nature of time. Consider, for instance, the fact that in general relativity there is sometimes (though not always!) a preferred way of “foliating” spacetime into instants of time and thus reintroducing a notion of absolute simultaneity, or the fact that on some interpretations of quantum mechanics, the dynamical laws seem to require a notion of absolute simultaneity.

Two additional questions about the nature of time that have been especially influenced by contemporary physics have to do with the arrow of time and the extent to which time itself might be emergent.

To motivate the first question, start from the observation that the order in which events happen in time seems to matter a great deal. There seems to be an important difference, for instance between a train traveling from Boston to Providence and a train traveling from Providence to Boston. This is because, even though both of these sequences may be constituted by the very same events, those events are in a different order in each sequence. In the former sequence the train being in Boston happens earlier than the train being in Providence. In the latter, the train being in Boston happens later.

These straightforward observations show that we experience time as having a direction. This is what philosophers call “the arrow of time”. But is the arrow of time a fundamental feature of the world? Or can it be reduced to some other feature, thus simplifying our metaphysics as a whole?

One way to try to eliminate the arrow of time at the fundamental level is to make use of certain interpretations of statistical mechanics inspired by Ludwig Boltzmann’s work. Imagine the history of the universe as a long timeline, but with no indication of which end of the time line represents the first moment of time and which end represents the last moment. It follows from certain interpretations of statistical mechanics that there is a physical quantity, the entropy of the universe, that will be relatively low at one end of the timeline and relatively high at the other end and will always increase as you move from the former end of the timeline to the latter. (More carefully, the entropy will almost always increase or at least stay constant.) The thought, then, is that we might be able to reduce the arrow of time to this entropy gradient. Earlier moments of time are just moments of time when the entropy of the universe is lower.

This way of eliminating the arrow of time from the fundamental level is promising, but has at least some unintuitive consequences. For instance, it seems natural to think that entropy could have decreased over time, instead of increasing over time as it actually does. But given the reduction described above, it is not in fact possible for entropy to decrease over time.

The second question mentioned above is a question about whether time itself—as opposed to just some particular feature of time, like time’s arrow—might merely be an emergent feature of the world. This question has become especially pressing as philosophers of physics have turned their attention to theories of quantum gravity in which there does not seem to be anything like temporal structure at the fundamental level. Work in this area is nascent, but some of the questions of interest include: Does quantum gravity eliminate time entirely or does it merely make time a non-fundamental feature of the world? What would it mean for something temporal to be grounded in something atemporal and what sort of grounding relation would be involved? What is the distinction between causal structure (especially the causal structure in causal set theory—one approach to quantum gravity) and temporal structure? And how can a theory that eliminates time entirely be empirically confirmed or disconfirmed?

Suggestions for Further Reading: Albert 2000; Emery 2019 & forthcoming; Godfrey-Smith 1979; Healey 2002; Huggett and Wüthrich 2013; Knox 2013; Markosian 2004; Maxwell 1985; Monton 2006; Price 1996; Putnam 1967; Rovelli 2017; Savitt 2000; Stein 1968, 1970; Weingard 1972; Wüthrich and Callender 2017.

A final important question concerns how considerations about the nature of time ought to impact the ways that we reason about time. For example, if it turns out that a B-theory is true, and there is no metaphysically important difference between the past and future, then should we adopt a more neutral attitude about events in our personal past and future? Epicurean philosopher Lucretius famously suggested that if there is no substantive difference between the times in the past before we came to exist and the times in the future after we die, we should care much less about the deprivation that death will bring. But we may think that even if the B-theory can describe everything that is metaphysically important without positing an important difference between the past and future, there is still an indispensable psychological importance to the past/future distinction that rational agents honor. Still other A-theorists argue that while there is an important metaphysical distinction between the past and future, the distinction has no normative importance.

If we deny three-dimensionalism and instead view ourselves as objects that persist through time by having temporal parts, then does that justify caring less about temporal parts in the distant future that are less strongly linked with our present part? Derek Parfit famously argued that a proper understanding of what we care about when we care about our own future persistence should motivate us to be less self-interested and more interested in redistributing resources to others. Endurantists have argued that facts about how we persist through time underwrite a strong distinction between moral principles (which concern what we owe to others now) and prudential rationality (which concerns what we owe to our future selves).

Another interesting line of research uses empirical work in psychology to better understand what is happening cognitively when we judge time as passing. This is especially pressing for B-theorists, who must explain why time seems to pass in psychologically or rationally significant ways, even though all passage is really just variation in an eternal manifold. Some B-theorists explain the apparent passage of time as an illusion of flow caused by perceptual processes that attribute apparent motion to events that happen in sequence. Another, compatible approach considers the way that evolutionary pressures might have shaped emotions and cognitive heuristics to give us a strong past/future distinction in our reasoning.

Suggestions for Further Reading: Brink 2003; Suhler and Callender 2012; Parfit 1971; Paul 2010; Prosser 2016; Sullivan 2018.

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• A.N. Prior: The Founding Father of Temporal Logic , a web site devoted to the study of Arthur Norman Prior (the founder of tense logic), at the Danish Centre for Philosophy and Science Studies
• The Centre for Time at the Department of Philosophy, University of Sydney.
• Eternalism , entry in Wikipedia
• Philosophy of space and time , entry in Wikipedia
• Philosophical presentism , entry in Wikipedia
• Time , entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Time , entry in Wikipedia
• Time Travel , entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

causation: backward | consciousness: temporal | fatalism | future contingents: medieval theories of | Heidegger, Martin | Husserl, Edmund | indexicals | logic: temporal | McTaggart, John M. E. | Newton, Isaac: views on space, time, and motion | presentism | Prior, Arthur | propositions: singular | quantum theory: quantum gravity | space and time: absolute and relational space and motion, post-Newtonian theories | space and time: being and becoming in modern physics | space and time: conventionality of simultaneity | temporal parts | time: the experience and perception of | time: thermodynamic asymmetry in | time travel | time travel: and modern physics | Zeno of Elea: Zeno’s paradoxes

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• Introduction

Adaptation to successive events

Adaptation to periodic change.

• The psychological present
• Perception of sequence
• Perceived duration
• Type of activity
• Level of motivation
• Personality traits
• Physiological effects: drugs
• Sensory deprivation and hypnosis

time perception

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time perception , experience or awareness of the passage of time.

The human experience of change is complex. One primary element clearly is that of a succession of events, but distinguishable events are separated by more or less lengthy intervals that are called durations. Thus, sequence and duration are fundamental aspects of what is perceived in change.

Manifestly, duration is relative to the events people isolate in the sequences through which they live: the duration of a kiss, of a meal, of a trip. A given interval always can be subdivided into a sequential chain delimiting briefer durations, as with the regular units that provide empirical measures of time: the second, the day , the year . Indeed, human experience is not simply that of one single series of events, but of a plurality of overlapping changes. The duration of a radio program, for example, can combine with that of a breakfast, both being inserted within the longer period of an ocean voyage.

Humans seem to be unable to live without some concept of time. Ancient philosophies sought to relate the concept of time to some objective reality to which it would correspond. René Descartes (1596–1650) inaugurated a critical era of philosophy by stressing the ancient problem of the origin of ideas, including the idea of time. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), providing a radical answer to the epistemological problem of time, wrote that we do not appreciate time objectively as a physical thing; that it is simply a pure form of sensible intuition . Other philosophers of the 18th and 19th centuries sought to explain the notion of time as arising from association and memory of successive perceptions.

A move to empirical psychology emerged with the growth of research on the introspective data of experience. From about mid-19th century, under the influence of the psychophysical notions of Gustav Theodor Fechner , psychologists conducted experiments to study the relationship between time as perceived and time as measured in physics . Their work with adults gradually spread to the study of children and of animals. The psychologists then broadened their investigations of time to cover all forms of adaptation to sequence and duration.

Sequential activities

One may respond to stimulation in an immediate way (as in unconditioned reflex action) without taking the element of time into account. Stimulation, however, can also signal an event to follow; then it has meaning only as part of the sequence of which it is the first term: bell announcing dinner, a road sign, or an approaching danger. People react to such stimuli with anticipatory behaviour that is adapted to a stimulus or action that has not yet occurred. The principles that govern such time-binding adaptation are none other than those of conditioning . One event becomes conditioned as the signal for another stimulus that is to be sought or avoided.

The bottle-fed infant who initially reacts to the nipple on his lips with a simple sucking reflex is gradually conditioned to stop crying when he sees the bottle (the signal for feeding). Later he may learn to react to even more secondary signals that announce the arrival of the bottle; e.g., being lifted from the crib or hearing the sounds of his mother warming the milk in the kitchen. His behaviour has come to incorporate the temporal dimension of the events.

According to the principles of instrumental conditioning , one stimulus becomes the signal for an ensuing event only if the second stimulus elicits an adaptive reaction (consummatory or aversive) and only if the order of the sequence is repeated. Conditioning tends to be established most rapidly when the interval between the signal (conditioned stimulus) and the unconditioned stimulus is quite brief. Ivan P. Pavlov estimated that the optimum interval for such a sequence was 0.5 second, which corresponds approximately to the intervals characteristic of sequences that are most accurately discriminable perceptually (see below Perception of sequence and duration ).

Aside from adapting the individual to the order of a sequence, conditioning also adapts to the duration between signal and immediately effective stimulus. Response to signal tends to occur after about the same interval that separated the two stimuli during conditioning. Thus, an animal may be trained to delay a response for some time after the signal (delayed conditioning).

This form of adaptation is most pervasive in human behaviour , permitting people to anticipate sequences of events in their environment so that they can prepare to cope appropriately with what is yet to happen.

In 1912 one of Pavlov’s students (I.P. Feokritova) demonstrated that a dog accustomed to being fed every 30 minutes would begin to drool toward the end of each half-hour period. It was clear evidence of conditioning to time; the between-feedings interval itself served as a conditioned stimulus.

That discovery underscores the ever-present periodicity of daily living, especially on the biological level: rhythms of activity and sleep, rhythms of eating and lovemaking. As conditioning intervenes, anticipatory experiences of hunger, fatigue, or arousal serve our adaptation to ecological demands.

Allowance should also be made for the daily, or circadian, rhythms in metabolic activity ( e.g., daily cycles of temperature change). There is evidence that these fundamental biological functions can synchronize with the rhythmic phases of environmental (exogenous) change. Thus within a few days after a factory worker has been assigned to the night shift, highs and lows of his daily fluctuations of temperature will be inversed. The rhythmic changes in body temperature persists, nevertheless, suggesting an innate (endogenous) basis for circadian phenomena. Such a hypothesis would mean that the gradual establishment of human circadian rhythms of sleep or temperature results from maturation of the nervous system rather than from conditioning in the strict sense. Experiments begun in 1962, in which men lived in caves or other enclosures for months deprived of temporal cues from the environment, also demonstrated the enduring nature of rhythms in body temperature and in sleep–wakefulness. The rhythmic periods, however, sometimes expanded, the subject beginning to live on an approximately two-day cycle without being aware of it.

Through conditioning to time and by way of circadian rhythms, human physiology provides a kind of biological clock that offers points of reference for temporal orientation.

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Timing and time perception: A review of recent behavioral and neuroscience findings and theoretical directions

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• Volume 72 , pages 561–582, ( 2010 )

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The aim of the present review article is to guide the reader through portions of the human time perception, or temporal processing, literature. After distinguishing the main contemporary issues related to time perception, the article focuses on the main findings and explanations that are available in the literature on explicit judgments about temporal intervals. The review emphasizes studies that are concerned with the processing of intervals lasting a few milliseconds to several seconds and covers studies issuing from either a behavioral or a neuroscience approach. It also discusses the question of whether there is an internal clock (pacemaker counter or oscillator device) that is dedicated to temporal processing and reports the main hypotheses regarding the involvement of biological structures in time perception.

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Grondin, S. Timing and time perception: A review of recent behavioral and neuroscience findings and theoretical directions. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 72 , 561–582 (2010). https://doi.org/10.3758/APP.72.3.561

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The effects of emotional states and traits on time perception

• Katie A. Lehockey 1 ,
• Andrea R. Winters 2 ,
• Alexandra J. Nicoletta 2 ,
• Taylor E. Zurlinden 2 &
• Daniel E. Everhart   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6615-653X 2  

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Models of time perception share an element of scalar expectancy theory known as the internal clock, containing specific mechanisms by which the brain is able to experience time passing and function effectively. A debate exists about whether to treat factors that influence these internal clock mechanisms (e.g., emotion, personality, executive functions, and related neurophysiological components) as arousal- or attentional-based factors.

This study investigated behavioral and neurophysiological responses to an affective time perception Go/NoGo task, taking into account the behavioral inhibition (BIS) and behavioral activation systems (BASs), which are components of reinforcement sensitivity theory.

After completion of self-report inventories assessing personality traits, electroencephalogram (EEG/ERP) and behavioral recordings of 32 women and 13 men recruited from introductory psychology classes were completed during an affective time perception Go/NoGo task. This task required participants to respond (Go) and inhibit (NoGo) to positive and negative affective visual stimuli of various durations in comparison to a standard duration.

Higher BAS scores (especially BAS Drive) were associated with overestimation bias scores for positive stimuli, while BIS scores were not correlated with overestimation bias scores. Furthermore, higher BIS Total scores were associated with higher N2d amplitudes during positive stimulus presentation for 280 ms, while higher BAS Total scores were associated with higher N2d amplitudes during negative stimuli presentation for 910 ms.

Findings are discussed in terms of arousal-based models of time perception, and suggestions for future research are considered.

1 Introduction

1.1 time perception theory, 1.1.1 time perception theory history.

Scalar expectancy theory utilizes a temporal information processing model, which suggests that an internal biological clock underlies a person’s ability to perceive time. This clock creates neuronal pulses, which are regulated by a theorized pacemaker. When attention is focused on the passage of time, a “switch” is flipped on and the number of accumulated pulses is counted until a signal is raised when some target interval duration is reached; this number is simultaneously held in reference memory. Subsequent judgments on the passage of time are made by comparing (comparator) the number of pulses being held in working memory with the value stored in reference memory [ 1 , 2 , 3 ].

Previous studies pertaining to how each of the aforementioned devices (i.e., the internal clock, the working-memory store, the reference memory store, and the comparator) works suggest that the use of external stimuli or internally activating factors may alter performance on time perception tasks. For example, it is thought that the pacemaker’s rate can be altered by factors such as body temperature [ 4 ] and pharmacological drugs [ 5 ] and by manipulating arousal. Treisman et al. [ 6 ] proposed a model that supports a relationship between increased arousal levels and underestimations of time.

Other models incorporate the concept of “attention” as an important component of time perception. For example, Zakay and Block [ 7 ] added the concept of a “gate” that lies between the pacemaker and the switch that mediates the effects of attention. As more attentional resources are allocated to tracking time, the gate opens wider, allowing more pulses to pass through to the accumulator [ 7 ]. Findings from this research suggest that time estimation is influenced by the amount of cognitive demand. Specifically, more demanding tasks are associated with shorter time duration estimations.

1.2 Time perception, emotion, and personality traits

It is clear that time perception is affected by both arousal and attention and that emotion influences both of these variables [ 8 , 9 ]. From an arousal perspective, emotional stimuli may lead to overestimations in time perception via a faster pacemaker rate. Attentional models, however, suggest that emotional stimuli may distract from temporal information processing, thereby reducing the amount of temporal pulses emitted, resulting in underestimations in time perception.

Past research has indicated that perceived durations of emotionally arousing events are usually distorted according to valence when compared to neutral events [ 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ]. Generally, as arousal increases with the presentation of emotional stimuli, time estimations also increase. Negative valence, but not positive valence, is also generally correlated with overestimations.

The influence of emotional state on the perception of time has been studied among different normal populations. Notably, evidence of a double mechanism comprised of an approach–withdrawal attentional element and an appetitive–aversive emotional element has been supported, and its interaction with two primary components of emotion (affective valence and level of arousal) seems to play a role in evaluation of perceived time [ 10 ]. For example, people tend to overestimate negative compared to positive emotional stimuli if stimuli are highly arousing, while people tend to judge negative emotional low-arousal stimuli as shorter compared to positive low-arousal emotional stimuli during verbal estimation and temporal reproduction tasks. However, in this study, no overestimations were observed compared to real time, which Angrilli et al. [ 10 ] explained as a function of the complexity of the task used.

Personality traits, and in particular those that are associated with approach- and withdrawal-related behavior, may also have a relationship with time perception, though to date there is little research within this area. One such way to study personality traits, as they pertain to time perception, is through the use of the behavioral inhibition system/behavioral activation system (BIS/BAS), which is the major focus of this study. These systems are thought to have distinct neural pathways and are typically examined via self-report scales [ 15 ]. The BAS is associated with positive affect and approach behavior. It is also associated with at least one negative emotion, anger, due to its influence on approach motivation tendencies [ 16 ]. Neurophysiologically, BAS is linked to the mesolimbic dopaminergic pathway [ 17 ]. The BIS, on the other hand, is associated with negative affect and withdrawal behavior. BIS seems to be modulated by adrenergic and serotonergic pathways [ 17 ]. BIS and BAS strength is associated with right and left frontal lobe activation, respectively [ 18 ]. These findings are generally in line with the valence hypothesis of emotion, which posits that the brain processes emotion in an asymmetric manner according to valence, with the left hemisphere specializing in the experience of positive emotionality and the right hemisphere specializing in negative emotion [ 19 ]. Some inconsistent baseline asymmetry findings from studies using anger as an emotional factor, which is considered to be negative in valence, led to the consideration of the approach–withdrawal model of emotion. The approach–withdrawal model posits that the left and right frontal lobes are specialized for processing emotions that involve approach and withdrawal behaviors, respectively [ 16 , 20 ].

Others have offered various theories concerning personality traits and the resultant effects on behavior. Gray’s [ 21 ] reinforcement sensitivity theory is comprised of three fundamental emotion systems: the behavioral activation system, the fight-flight-or-freeze system, and the behavioral inhibition system. Each system is associated with neural activity and neurotransmitters, including dopamine, which is of particular interest in time perception research as it plays an important role in motor movement timing.

Dopamine is also associated with feelings of pleasure and is used by the brain to reinforce behaviors associated with seeking out certain pleasurable experiences. Dopamine is thought to play a central role in the motivation system called BAS, which is sensitive to indications of reward, nonpunishment, and escape from punishment, causing a person to engage in goal-oriented behavior [ 15 ]. According to Gray’s reinforcement sensitivity theory, BAS is also thought to be responsible for the experience of positive emotions [ 15 , 22 ]. In an electrophysiological study using positive, negative, and neutral emotional stimuli, people who rated high on the BAS scale had a significant and more intense response to positive emotional stimuli than to negative or neutral stimuli [ 22 ]. It has been found that people who have high BAS scores have increased left frontal activation [ 23 ], especially when presented with positive emotional stimuli [ 22 ].

Another component of Gray’s theory is the BIS, which is associated with anxiety, and is sensitive to signals of punishment, nonreward, and novelty [ 15 ]. It has been found that people who score high on BIS have greater right frontal activation in EEG studies [ 17 , 22 , 24 ]. People who score high on BIS are thought to experience more negative affect than those people who score low on BIS.

1.3 Electrophysiology, time perception, and inhibition

One way to gain insight into any cognitive or emotional event that occurs at the subsecond level is to examine event-related potentials, or ERPs. ERPs are voltage changes that occur as a result of the brain’s response to a presented stimulus, and are thought to represent post-synaptic changes in neurons [ 25 ]. ERPs are recorded from a participant via electrodes evenly distributed across the scalp, while the participant engages in an experimental task. Positive and negative deflections of voltage (e.g., N1, P1, N2, P2) are of particular interest in cognitive neuroscience research, as are the latencies in milliseconds and amplitudes in microvolts of these deflections.

An aspect of executive function that is important in timing in conversations and withholding inappropriate responses is inhibition. Inhibition has been studied electrophysiologically using a Go/NoGo ERP task. In this type of task, participants are presented with target and nontarget stimuli and are asked to refrain from responding after the presentation of nontarget stimuli. Two ERP components are usually of interest in this kind of study, namely the N2 and P3 [ 26 , 27 ].

The N2 is a frontal negative displacement that usually occurs between 200 and 300 ms after stimulus presentation. The P3 is a fronto-central positive displacement that usually occurs between 300 and 500 ms after stimulus presentation. The N2 component is thought to reflect inhibition on a premotor level [ 28 ], while the P3 component is thought to reflect motor inhibition, or the evaluation of inhibitory processes [ 26 , 29 ]. A right preponderance of activity has been recorded on occasion for both the N2 and P3 [ 27 ]. Orbitofrontal and inferior anterior cingulate cortices (ACC) are thought to mediate the generation of these ERP components [ 26 , 30 ].

1.4 Purpose and hypotheses

To date, the relationships between time perception, emotion, and personality traits have not been systematically examined. The present study utilized a Go/NoGo time perception task using emotional stimuli to test the effect of emotional valence on time perception. Self-reported personality characteristics using the BIS/BAS scales and inhibitory neural correlates derived from ERPs were also examined. The purpose of the present study was to:

Examine the relationship among levels of BIS/BAS, affect, and perceived stimulus duration using behavioral and self-report measures. Since visual emotional stimuli elicit higher arousal levels, it was hypothesized that participants would overestimate durations of emotional stimuli compared to neutral stimuli. More specifically, higher self-reported BAS scores would be associated with the tendency to overestimate the amount of time that positive stimuli were presented since previous findings indicated higher BAS scorers had more intense responses to positive stimuli [ 22 ]. Furthermore, self-reported BIS scores would be associated with the tendency to overestimate the amount of time that negative stimuli were presented.

Use the Go/NoGo paradigm to compare the associations between the variables of BIS/BAS, stimulus duration, stimulus valence, and the inhibitory N2 ERP component. It was hypothesized that N2 amplitudes during the presentation of NoGo stimuli would be larger than those observed during Go stimuli. The N2 component was also expected to be different for participants who scored higher on BAS compared to participants who scored higher on BIS. With regard to stimulus valence, higher scores on BAS would be associated with larger N2 amplitudes for positive NoGo stimuli, while higher scores on BIS would be associated with larger N2 amplitudes for negative NoGo stimuli.

2.1 Participants

Based on a priori power analysis to detect large effects with 80% power using GPower 3.1, 45 right-handed volunteers aged 18 years and older ( M  = 19.78, SD = 4.1) from East Carolina University were recruited using the undergraduate psychology participant pool. Of these participants, 32 were women and 13 were men. All participants had normal or corrected-to-normal vision and no prior significant neurological or psychiatric history. Participants received extra credit in a psychology course for participation.

2.2 Questionnaires

Participants completed several self-report measures before the experimental procedure. Carver and White’s [ 15 ] BIS/BAS scales were completed by the participants as a way to measure behavioral inhibition and behavioral activation of each participant, and the Lateral Preference Inventory was administered to assess for handedness and other features of lateral preference (i.e., eye, ear, leg) [ 31 ]. The behavioral inhibition scale (BIS) and behavioral activation scale (BAS) are comprised of 20 items which span four domains: BIS, BAS reward responsiveness, BAS Drive, and BAS fun seeking. The BIS scale is made up of seven items that measure sensitivity to withdrawal behavior and expectations of punishment. The BAS scales are made up of 13 items which measure anticipation of reward, motivation toward desired goals, and desire to approach novel situations with expectation of reward. Participants respond to each item using a 4-point Likert scale (1 indicating “strongly agree” and 4 indicating “strongly disagree”). The BIS/BAS scales possess decent internal consistency with alpha coefficients ranging from .66 to .76, and comparable test–retest reliability with test–retest coefficients ranging from .68 to .72.

Other self-report measures that were administered include the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale, the Mini-IPIP Scales, and the Sensation-Seeking Scale. These additional measures were included for exploratory purposes, in order to understand how impulsivity, core personality characteristics, and the propensity toward sensation seeking, respectively, may affect time perception.

The Barratt Impulsiveness Scale is a reliable measure of impulsivity with three factors (nonplanning, motor impulsivity, and attention impulsivity) in both normal and clinical populations [ 32 ]. The 30-item self-report instrument was originally developed as part of a larger attempt to relate anxiety and impulsiveness to psychomotor efficiency. It contains questions about everyday behavior such as whether individuals make comments “without thinking” and whether they switch jobs frequently or feel “restless in lectures.”

The Mini-IPIP is a short form of the 50-item international personality item pool-five-factor model measure that is used to survey the big five personality traits; it has demonstrated consistent convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity [ 33 ]. For this self-administered measure, respondents are instructed to read 20 phrases describing people’s behavior. Next, respondents rate themselves using 7-point Likert scale with varying degrees of agreement ranging from “1”— Disagree Strongly , to “7”— Agree Strongly . Consisting of four questions per factor, the scale was developed for circumstances in which lengthier personality measures may not be feasible. Nevertheless, the Mini-IPIP has been shown to be a valid and reliable measure of the big five factors of personality (neuroticism, extraversion, intellect/imagination, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) with notable internal consistency alphas at or > .60.

The Sensation-Seeking Scale is a 40-item questionnaire that is comprised of four different subscales: Thrill and Adventure Seeking (TAS), Disinhibition (Dis), Experience Seeking (ES), and Boredom Susceptibility (BS). The Sensation-Seeking Scale has demonstrated satisfactory internal reliability when total scores are considered, but when the subscales (Thrill and Adventure Seeking, Experience Seeking, Disinhibition, and Boredom Susceptibility) are considered separately, some concern is raised with regard to each of their reliabilities, especially considering its use of dated language and examples of sensation-seeking activities [ 34 ].

2.3 Equipment and stimuli

The control and presentation of the experimental stimuli and recording of participants’ responses were managed with SCAN 4.5 software (Compumedics Neuroscan, El Paso, TX). The stimuli that were presented to represent duration conditions consisted of three types of pictures (positive, negative, or neutral) selected from the International Affective Pictures System (IAPS), which were matched for valence and arousal [ 35 ]. All items were matched for luminance and size. The pictures selected for this study were inanimate art and household objects. Event-related potentials were recorded during stimuli presentation throughout the duration of the task.

2.4 Affective Go/NoGo task

Participants performed a temporal Go/NoGo task using emotional stimuli, adapted from two primary studies [ 27 , 36 ]. It was comprised of a learning phase, a practice phase, and a testing phase. During the learning phase, participants were shown the “standard” stimulus duration (700 ms) 10 times, represented by a gray oval on the screen that was the same size as the actual stimuli (Fig.  1 ).

Learning phase: “standard” stimulus (700 ms) was presented 10 times in succession represented by a shape

During the practice phase, participants learned the Go/NoGo paradigm using neutral stimuli for both target and nontarget stimuli. The target stimuli were neutral IAPS pictures, while the nontarget stimulus was the gray oval used during the learning phase. In its entirety, the practice phase consisted of one trial block with 150 presentations of target stimuli (30 presentations of each duration condition) and 50 presentations of nontarget stimuli; however, participants were only exposed to 7 min of the practice phase in order to allow enough time for them to gain mastery of the task without becoming bored or lethargic. Stimuli were presented in five stimulus durations (280, 490, 700, 910, and 1120 ms). The occurrence of target and nontarget stimuli was pseudo-random, and the interstimulus interval was 1600 ms. The participants compared the duration of the target stimulus presentation to the “standard” duration. The participants then responded using a mouse according to the comparison made. If the participants made the judgment that the target stimulus duration was longer than the “standard” duration, the participants were instructed to press the right mouse button using the third finger of the right hand. If the target stimulus was perceived as being shorter than the “standard” duration, the participant was instructed to press the left mouse button using the index finger of the right hand. Even though some target stimuli were equal in duration to the “standard” stimulus duration, participants were forced to choose between only two responses (longer than or shorter than the “standard”). This allowed for testing the effect that personality traits and/or emotion had on time estimation (Fig.  2 ).

Practice phase. a If the participant is presented with the target stimulus (in the example above, the target stimulus is a neutral IAPS picture), the participant will judge if the stimulus is shorter or longer than the standard duration. In the example above, the participant should press the right button on the mouse to indicate that the duration was longer than the standard stimulus duration. b If the participant is presented with the nontarget stimulus (the gray oval used in the learning phase), the participant will inhibit any response and wait for the next stimulus presentation

During the testing phase, participants encountered two trials of the previously described Go/NoGo task, in which target stimuli were based on valence (positive or negative). During one trial block, positive IAPS pictures served as target stimuli with negative IAPS pictures acting as the nontarget stimuli. During this trial block, participants chose if a positive stimulus was shorter than or longer than the “standard” duration, and inhibited any response to negative stimuli (Fig.  3 a). During the other trial block, negative IAPS pictures were the target stimuli while positive IAPS pictures were nontarget stimuli. Participants chose if a negative stimulus was shorter than or longer than the “standard” duration during this trial block, and inhibited any response to positive stimuli presentation (Fig.  3 b). The order of the positive and negative target sessions was counterbalanced across participants. The target stimuli were presented 150 times, while nontarget stimuli were presented 50 times. The occurrence of target and nontarget stimuli within each block was pseudo-random, and the interstimulus interval was 1600 ms. Each block contained 200 trials. The duration conditions were the same as those explained in the practice phase, and participants only had two possible response choices for target stimuli (longer than or shorter than the “standard”). Participants were encouraged to respond as quickly as possible to target stimuli through written and verbal instructions prior to task completion. Participants were presented with the “standard” duration five times between blocks.

Test phase. a During the Positive Target Trial Block, if the participant is presented with a target stimulus (positive IAPS picture), the participant will compare its duration to the “standard” duration. The participant will then respond using the mouse as was learned during the practice phase. In the example above, the participant should judge the duration to be longer than the “standard,” and thus press the right button on the mouse. When presented with a negative (nontarget) stimulus, the participant should inhibit a response. b During the Negative Target Trial Block, if the participant is presented with a target stimulus (negative IAPS picture), the participant will compare its duration to the “standard” duration and then respond using the mouse. In the example above, the participant is presented with a “shorter” stimulus and thus should respond by pressing the left button on the mouse. When presented with a positive (nontarget) stimulus, the participant should inhibit a response

2.5 Procedures

Participants were tested in the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory located within the Department of Psychology at East Carolina University. Prior to participation, informed consent forms that were approved by the University Policy and Review Committee on Human Research of East Carolina University were reviewed orally with each participant and signed by each participant. Adherence to the “Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct” was kept with all participants in this study [ 37 ]. Once consent was established, participants completed self-report inventories and were acclimated to EEG recording procedures and given written instructions for the Affective Go/NoGo Task.

Procedures for electroencephalogram (EEG) analysis were adapted from Everhart and Demaree [ 38 ]. Participants were seated in an electrically shielded room in a comfortable reclining chair and fitted with a lycra electrode cap (Electro-Cap International, Inc.). Electrodes were arranged according to the 10–20 international system [ 39 ]. EEG data were recorded from 32 active electrode sites using linked ears (A1 and A2) as a reference (monopolar montage). Electrode placement included frontal: F3, F4, F7, F8; central: Cz, C3, C4; temporal: T3, T4, T5, T6; parietal: Pz, P3, P4; and occipital: O1, O2. In addition, electrodes were placed on the outer cantus of each eye so that eye movement recordings could be obtained. Electrode impedance was maintained below 5000 holms and checked at the beginning and end of the experimental session. Eye movement recordings were used to correct for the presence of eye movement artifact in the ERPs and to determine which trials should be excluded from averaging. Individual trials that contained excessive artifact associated with body and eye movement were excluded during off-line processing and prior to averaging. The EEG and eye movements were recorded with a bandpass of 1 and 100 Hz and a sensitivity of 7.5 µV/mm for EEG recordings. The EEG signal was amplified and converted on line to digital using a NeuroScan 32-channel PC-based EEG/evoked potential brain mapping system. A high-pass filter was used to eliminate slow wave frequencies that were less than 2 Hz. A 60 Hz notch filter was used to eliminate 60 Hz line noise. Artifact reduction was completed prior to computing grand averages for EEG and N2 data. The EEG data were converted on line for display, storage, and analysis [ 38 ].

Once participants finished reading the instructions for completing experimental procedures, baseline EEG was recorded according to procedures adapted from Davidson [ 40 ] including four minutes of baseline recording alternating between eyes open and eyes closed conditions. Participants then participated in the learning, practice, and test phases of the affective Go/NoGo task. Before each trial of the test phase, participants engaged in the learning phase. Error rate was measured as a behavioral variable to assess a bias in time perception during the “Go” standard duration stimuli presentations. After completion of all trials, the N2 responses were identified by visual inspection as the most negative peak between 100 and 300 ms [ 27 ]. Difference waves between Go and NoGo stimuli of equal duration for each valence were computed to form the N2d component (NoGo–Go). Separate grand averages for all data were created. Event-related potentials were averaged across participants for emotional valence and stimulus duration.

2.6 Analyses

2.6.1 hypothesis one.

Correlation analyses were performed to determine the relationship between BIS, BAS, and an overestimation bias score when presented with target stimuli that were equivalent to the “standard” duration. The overestimation bias score was computed as the proportion of “longer” responses to the overall number of responses made during each test phase trial. The distribution of these scores was normal. These analyses were used to investigate the hypothesis that higher self-reported BIS scores would be associated with the tendency to overestimate the amount of time that negative stimuli were presented. These analyses were also used to investigate the hypothesis that higher self-reported BAS scores would be associated with the tendency to overestimate the amount of time that positive stimuli were presented.

2.6.2 Hypothesis two

Paired samples t tests were used to investigate the hypothesis that N2 amplitudes for “NoGo” stimuli would be larger than N2 amplitudes for “Go” stimuli. ANCOVA with BIS/BAS as covariates and the dependent variable of N2d amplitude (NoGo–Go N2 amplitude for emotion and duration condition) was also conducted. Duration (short and long) and valence (positive and negative) were included as factors. These analyses were used to investigate the hypothesis that higher BAS scores are associated with greater N2 amplitudes for positive NoGo stimuli. These analyses were also used to investigate the hypothesis that higher BIS scores are associated with greater N2 amplitudes for negative NoGo stimuli.

Statistical analyses were conducted using SPSS 19 statistical software package (IBM, Inc., Armonk, NY). Raw data were initially inspected for missing data and normality. Behavioral data from seven participants were incomplete due to noncompliance with the task and were left out of correlation analyses for hypothesis one. Due to substantial electrooculography (EOG) and electromyography (EMG) artifact during ERP recordings, nineteen participants were excluded from ANCOVA for hypothesis two. EOG and EMG were related to researchers’ observations of participants shifting in their seat and a considerable amount of yawning behaviors.

3.1 Hypothesis one: relationships between BIS, BAS, and time perception

Results for evaluation of assumptions of normality indicated a positively skewed leptokurtic distribution of BAS Reward Responsiveness, which was corrected by excluding two univariate outliers on BAS Reward Responsiveness from analysis. This and initial exclusions due to noncompliance with the task resulted in 36 participants for correlation analysis.

To determine the relationship between BIS, BAS, and overestimation tendencies according to stimulus valence, directional correlation analyses were performed. Basic descriptive statistics and zero-order correlation coefficients between BIS, BAS subscales, and overestimation bias scores are presented in Table  1 . Self-reported BAS Total (BAS TOT) scores ( M  = 21.91, SD = 5.13) were significantly, positively correlated with overestimation bias scores (OEPos) for positive stimuli ( M  = 49.35, SD = 24.70), r  =.292, n  = 36, p  = .0421, 90% CI [.014, .53]. Self-reported BAS Drive (BAS D) scores ( M  = 10.07, SD = 3.22) were significantly, positively correlated with OEPos ( M  = 49.35, SD = 24.70), r  =.312, n  = 36, p  = .0320, 90% CI [.036, .54]. These findings support the hypothesis that higher BAS scores would be associated with the tendency to overestimate positive “Go” stimuli. On the other hand, self-reported BIS scores ( M  = 15.42, SD = 3.73) were not significantly correlated with overestimation bias scores (OENeg) for negative stimuli ( M  = 53.068, SD = 27.49), r  =.056, n  = 36, p  = .373, 95% CI [− .277, .377]. There was insufficient evidence to support the hypothesis that higher BIS scores would be associated with the tendency to overestimate negative “Go” stimuli.

To further investigate the relationship between BIS, BAS, and overestimation tendencies according to stimulus valence, correlation analyses were performed after stratifying data by sex. This was done in response to observations that women tended to have higher positive overestimation bias scores ( M  = 50.557, SD = 28.568) compared to men ( M  = 43.936, SD = 12.462), as well as higher negative overestimation bias scores ( M  = 54.783, SD = 28.677) compared to men ( M  = 47.943, SD = 23.813). There were also far fewer men than women who participated in this study, and most of the men participated over the summer as a way to earn extra credit in class, possibly making their motivation for participating in this study different than that of those who participated over the fall semester for course credit. Basic descriptive statistics and zero-order correlation coefficients between BIS, BAS subscales, and overestimation bias scores for women are presented in Table  2 . Self-reported BAS D scores ( M  = 11.000, SD = 3.142) were significantly, positively correlated with OEPos ( M  = 50.557, SD = 28.568), r  =.345, n  = 28, p  = .0360, 90% CI [.073, .57]. This finding supports the hypothesis that higher BAS scores would be associated with the tendency to overestimate positive “Go” stimuli. No other significant correlations were found. There was insufficient evidence to support the hypothesis that higher BIS scores would be associated with the tendency to overestimate negative “Go” stimuli.

Table  3 presents correlation data between men’s self-reported BIS and BAS scores and overestimation bias scores. No significant correlations were found, indicating insufficient evidence to support hypothesis one.

3.2 Hypothesis two: personality, affective states, and the N2

To investigate the hypothesis that N2 amplitudes would be greater (more negative) in response to “NoGo” than to “Go” stimuli presentations, directional paired samples t tests were performed. Due to artifact, eight participants were excluded from this analysis, leaving n of 37. As expected, N2 amplitudes were significantly greater (more negative) in response to “NoGo” stimuli ( M  = − 7.136 microvolts, SD = 4.0364) than in response to “Go” stimuli ( M  = − 6.118 microvolts, SD = 3.379), t (36) = 1.886, p  = 0.0335, 90% CI [.106, 1.929]. This finding supports the hypothesis that “NoGo” N2 amplitudes would be more negative than “Go” N2 amplitudes.

N2d difference waves were calculated in order to serve as the dependent variable in analyses of covariance across Go and NoGo conditions. In order to enhance understanding, a graphic representative depiction of the N2d wave is observed in Fig.  4 . While it is the N2d wave values that are used for analyses, the differences are appreciated in visual format via provision of separate grand averages of Go and NoGo data (as depicted in figures V–VIII). GLM ANCOVAs were conducted to evaluate the influence of emotional valence (positive or negative) and duration (280, 490, 700, 910, and 1120 ms) of stimuli presentation on N2 amplitude across Go and NoGo conditions while taking into consideration covariates of BIS and BAS personality traits. There was a significant emotional valence x BIS Total interaction, F (1, 20) = 7.028, p  = .015 for 280-ms condition, and a significant emotional valence x BAS Total interaction, F (1, 22) = 4.602, p  = .043 for 910-ms condition.

Representative N2d (NoGo–Go) grand average at scalp electrode Fz

No other main effects or interactions were observed. To examine the significant interactions observed for the 280-ms condition and the 910-ms condition, two separate post hoc correlation analyses were completed involving emotional valence (positive and negative) and corresponding scores on BIS and BAS. For the 280-ms condition, directional post hoc correlation analyses indicated that the N2d for positive stimuli at the 280-ms condition (P1611) ( M  = − 11.455 microvolts, SD = 16.648) had a strong zero-order correlation in the opposite direction as hypothesized with participants’ BIS Total self-report scores ( M  = 15.330 microvolts, SD = 3.397), r  =.549, n  = 24, p  = .967, 95% CI [.187, .780], while the N2d for negative stimuli at the 280-ms condition (N1611) ( M  = − 10.962 microvolts, SD = 14.544) did not significantly or strongly correlate with BIS Total. Figure  5 illustrates NoGo and Go N2 amplitudes during the 280-ms duration condition for positive stimuli presentation, while Fig.  6 illustrates the same information for negative stimuli presentation.

Go and NoGo N2 ERP grand averages for 280-ms positive condition at electrode FZ

Go and NoGo N2 ERP grand averages for 280-ms negative condition at electrode FZ

For the 910-ms condition, directional post hoc correlation analyses indicated that the N2d for negative stimuli at the 910-ms condition (N1914) ( M  = − 10.846 microvolts, SD = 8.380) had a strong zero-order correlation in the opposite direction as hypothesized with participants’ BAS Total self-report scores ( M  = 23.230 microvolts, SD = 5.101), r  =.496, n  = 26, p  = .995, 95% CI [.134, .741], while the N2d for positive stimuli at the 910-ms condition ( M  = − 11.591 microvolts, SD = 11.731) did not significantly or strongly correlate with BAS Total. These findings are in opposition to the hypothesis that greater BAS scores would be associated with increased N2d amplitudes for positive stimuli presentation. Figure  7 illustrates NoGo and Go N2 amplitudes during the 910-ms duration condition for positive stimuli presentation, while Fig.  8 illustrates the same information for negative stimuli presentation.

Go and NoGo N2 ERP grand averages for 910-ms positive condition at electrode FZ

Go and NoGo N2 ERP grand averages for 910-ms negative condition at electrode FZ

4 Discussion

4.1 summary of results.

The main findings related to hypothesis one included significant correlations between overestimation bias scores and BAS self-report scores. Hypothesis one posited that higher BAS scores would be associated with greater overestimation bias scores for positive stimuli presentation. (Based on previous findings in the literature that visual emotional stimuli evoke arousal, higher BAS scores are associated with sensitivity to reward and positive emotionality, and BIS is associated with sensitivity to anxiety, novelty, and punishment.) The second part of hypothesis one was that higher BIS scores would be associated with greater overestimation bias scores for negative stimuli presentation on the same premise. Higher BAS scores were associated with positive stimuli presentation. However, BIS scores were not significantly correlated with overestimation bias scores. BAS Drive subscale scores were main contributors to this partial support of hypothesis one, as the scores from BAS Drive were the only subscale scores that were significantly correlated with overestimation bias scores for positive stimuli. When data for hypothesis one were stratified by sex, women’s BAS Drive scores were significantly correlated with overestimation bias scores for positive stimuli presentation, while no such relationship was evidenced for men’s BAS subscale scores. This may indicate the need to test for sex-related differences in affective time perception according to personality traits in the future.

Support for the first part of hypothesis two was found, which stated that N2 amplitudes would be greater in response to “NoGo” than to “Go” stimuli presentations, indicating that the novel affective Go/NoGo task successfully elicited the N2 component thought to be associated with inhibition. Partial support for the second part of hypothesis two was observed. It was hypothesized that higher BIS scores would be associated with greater N2d difference waves for negative stimuli presentation and higher BAS scores would be associated with greater N2d difference waves for positive stimuli presentation. Indeed, N2d difference waves differentiated across personality trait levels; however, higher BIS Total scores were associated with higher N2d amplitudes during positive stimulus presentation for 280 ms, while higher BAS Total scores were associated with higher N2d amplitudes during negative stimuli presentation for 910 ms. These findings are different from previous findings indicating stronger neurophysiological responses of high BAS and BIS scorers to positive and negative stimuli presentation, respectively [ 22 ].

4.2 Partial support for arousal-based models of time perception

Results from hypothesis one indicate the tendency to overestimate time duration was associated with higher BAS self-report scores, especially BAS Drive, during the presentation of positive stimuli. BAS Drive is associated with strong and quick persistence to obtain goals. Perhaps this trait in particular is a measure of baseline arousal levels on which people vary their perceptions of time passing for even very quick durations. It has been discussed in the literature that visual emotional stimuli evoke arousal, theoretically speeding up the internal clock via the pacemaker mechanism. Findings from the present study may suggest that BAS Drive trait is sensitive to the pacemaker. Making underestimations of time would have been supportive of attentional-based models of time perception, while making overestimations supported an arousal-based model of time perception [ 41 , 42 , 43 ].

From a clinical perspective, it is interesting to note that BAS is associated with overestimation of positive stimuli. Individuals with elevated BAS typically engage in positive, approach-related behavior and are generally thought of as less anxious or fearful than individuals with elevated BIS. Although only speculative, it is possible that individuals with elevated BAS are somewhat resilient to the effects of negative stimuli. In contrast, individuals with elevated BIS are thought to experience positive stimuli somewhat differently, to the extent that it could actually be perceived as negative. Although only in infant stages, there is a line of research that suggests that individuals with elevated BIS are less adherent to simple medical treatments (i.e., positive stimuli) that could improve quality of life and prevent long-term medical complications [ 44 ].

Greater N2 amplitudes for NoGo stimuli in general indicated an inhibitory response to emotionally incongruent stimuli as expected. The presence of the N2 indicates participants’ use of orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortices and reflects inhibition on a premotor level [ 45 ]. Since previous research indicated that higher BAS and BIS scores were associated with more intense orientation and responses to positive and negative stimuli, respectively, it was originally hypothesized that higher BAS self-report scores would be associated with greater N2d responses to positive stimuli, while higher BIS self-report scores would be associated with greater N2d responses to negative stimuli assuming an arousal-based model of time perception. However, BIS Total scores were associated with greater N2d responses to positive stimuli, perhaps suggesting that positive stimuli were being perceived as relatively novel experiences to participants’ general perception styles. BAS Total scores on the other hand were associated with greater N2d responses to negative stimuli, again suggesting an orientation to novel stimuli that were incongruent to participants’ general perception styles. These findings are contrary to arousal-based models of time perception and past research involving individual differences [ 46 ] and indeed may be indicative of attentional mechanisms involved in time perception.

Tipples [ 46 ] found support for arousal-based time perception models, in that negative emotionality was associated with overestimations of angry and fearful stimuli presentation durations. It was suggested that attentional effects were not observed in that study because they were mediated by emotional arousal through noradrenaline, which affects the operation of both attentional and time processes, and is also thought to facilitate orienting and slower disengagement of attention. Since the current study found results in opposition to arousal-based models of time perception, perhaps the Go/NoGo task tapped the previously described attentional mechanisms that were sensitive to both noradrenergic and dopaminergic pathways that are implicated in BIS and BAS, respectively. Of note, the Tipples [ 46 ] study differs fundamentally from the present study in two ways. First, the former study utilized affective faces rather than objects (i.e., IAPS). The negative affective faces were perceived as more arousing than positive affective faces. In the present study, the perceived levels of arousal for positive and negative stimuli were controlled. To this extent, the significant effects noted within Tipples’ [ 46 ] study may be attributable to the differences in magnitude of arousal between positive and negative affective faces. Second, Tipples [ 46 ] did not examine BIS and BAS; rather, the EAS Temperament Survey was used [ 47 ]. While this survey is associated with individual differences in positive and negative temperament and may overlap with BAS and BIS, there are inherent differences between these constructs that make direct comparison impossible.

Furthermore, findings indicated that higher BAS scores were associated with greater N2d amplitudes at the negative 910-ms duration condition (longer than the standard duration), while higher BIS scores were associated with greater N2d amplitudes at the positive 280-ms duration condition (shorter than the standard duration). Assuming that the Go/NoGo task was able to tap attentional mechanisms along with their respective neurophysiological pathways, perhaps individuals who report higher BAS are more sensitive to attentional mechanisms at relatively longer durations of incongruent emotional stimuli than higher BIS scorers.

4.3 Limitations of current study

A major limitation to the present study was the inability to compare emotional conditions to neutral conditions. Including a neutral condition in future studies may help researchers isolate further arousal mechanisms associated with emotion. Another limitation was the amount of artifact encountered by taking N2d difference waves for hypothesis two. Increasing power in future studies by including more participants to account for this artifact may help detect findings the present study was unable to uncover. Previous research has included the use of a feedback tone for slow responses to “Go” stimuli, which helps to elicit the N2 ERP more reliably and effectively [ 28 ]. The last main limitation to this study was the sampling bias of including summer semester students who were also student athletes. Compared to women, a larger proportion of these student athletes were men, and stratifying data by sex for hypothesis one resulted in more consistent findings for women than men. This finding could also be the result of lower power for male participants in this sample. Regardless, sex-related differences in time perception should be explored in future studies.

4.4 Conclusions

In summary, the hypotheses of this study were partially supported. BAS scores were associated with overestimation bias scores for positive stimuli. Higher BIS Total scores were associated with higher N2d amplitudes during positive stimulus presentation for 280 ms, while higher BAS Total scores were associated with higher N2d amplitudes during negative stimuli presentation for 910 ms. This study represents an initial attempt to understand the relationship between approach-avoidance tendencies and time perception via the utilization of a Go/NoGo ERP laboratory paradigm. Future studies will remedy the described limitations of the current investigation, with particular focus on examination of arousal mechanisms.

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Authors’ contributions

KL provided theoretical overview, collected and analysed data and wrote the initial draft of the manuscript; AW analysed data and edited/formatted the manuscript; AN analysed data and edited/formatted the manuscript; TZ analysed data and edited the manuscript; DE analysed data, edited the manuscript and provided the theoretical overview for the study. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Katie A. Lehockey is a clinical neuropsychologist at Medstar National Rehabilitation Hospital. Her research interests include emotion regulation and treatment adherence.

Andrea R. Winters is a doctoral student in the Clinical Health Psychology program at East Carolina University. Her research interests include emotion regulation and insomnia.

Alexandra J. Nicoletta is a doctoral student in the Clinical Health Psychology program at East Carolina University. Her research interests include electrophysiology, emotion regulation, sleep disruption, quality of life and traumatic brain injury.

Taylor E. Zurlinden is a doctoral student in the Clinical Health Psychology program at East Carolina University. Her research interests include emotion regulation, sleep and quality of life.

Daniel E. Everhart is professor and interim chair of the Department of Psychology at East Carolina University. He is a clinical neuropsychologist with expertise in electrophysiology and sleep disorders. His research interests include electrophysiology, sleep disorders and emotion regulation.

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Lehockey, K.A., Winters, A.R., Nicoletta, A.J. et al. The effects of emotional states and traits on time perception. Brain Inf. 5 , 9 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40708-018-0087-9

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Theses and Dissertations

Two essays on time perceptions and patience.

Frank May , University of South Carolina - Columbia Follow

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Open Access Dissertation

Moore School of Business

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Business Administration

First Advisor

Ashwani Monga

My dissertation examines how the properties inherent to time can affect perception of wait time and, consequently, patience. Patience, or the willingness to forgo a smaller reward in the present in order to obtain a larger reward in the future, is an important construct in the consumer behavior literature. I focus on how consumers perceive wait time when faced with an intertemporal choice between a smaller-sooner option and a larger-later one (e.g., receive less money earlier vs. more money later). In this type of situation, wait time is standing between the individual and a better option. I argue that the properties of time itself can affect wait time perception, which in turn can affect patience for a larger-later reward.

There exists scant research on how the properties of time itself can affect time perception and patience, and said research focuses on quantitative properties of time (duration, numeric labels of time, etc.). The focus of my dissertation is on qualitative properties of time—how the anthropomorphic properties of time (essay 1) and the linguistic properties of time (essay 2) can affect time perception and, in turn, patience.

Essay 1 introduces time anthropomorphism: a tendency to attribute time with humanlike mental states (e.g., time has intentions; it has a will of its own). I find that when time is anthropomorphized, it affects patience through a potency process. That is, for low power (but not high power) individuals, wait time is perceived to be more aversive when anthropomorphized, leading to a preference for a larger-later option versus a smaller-sooner one.

v Essay 2 explores the notion that the language used in frames describing time may affect patience. In intertemporal settings, patience is influenced by the size of the later reward relative to the sooner one—a much-larger (vs. larger) later reward induces more patience. I show that this effect is moderated by the frame of wait time—the effect of reward size is stronger in far (vs. long) frames. Conceptualizing the later reward as a “destination” at the end of a wait time, I argue that destinations are associated more with far (vs. long) frames. Consequently, increasing the size of the destination (i.e., later reward) leads to relatively contracted time perception, and higher patience in far (vs. long) frames.

© 2014, Frank May

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May, F.(2014). Two Essays on Time Perceptions and Patience. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/2859

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Time Perception Mechanisms at Central Nervous System

Rhailana fontes.

1 Brain Mapping and Plasticity Laboratory, Federal University of Piauí, Parnaíba, Brazil

Jéssica Ribeiro

Daya s. gupta.

2 Department of Biology, Camden County College, Blackwood, NJ, USA

Dionis Machado

3 Laboratory of Brain Mapping and Functionality, Federal University of Piauí, Parnaíba

Fernando Lopes-Júnior

Francisco magalhães, victor hugo bastos, kaline rocha, victor marinho, gildário lima.

4 Neurophisic Applied Laboratory, Federal University of Piauí, Parnaíba

Bruna Velasques

5 Brain Mapping and and Sensory-Motor Integration Laboratory, Psychiatry Institute of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro

Pedro Ribeiro

Marco orsini.

6 Rehabilitation Science Program, Analysis of Human Movement Laboratory, Augusto Motta University Center, Rio de Janeiro

7 Neurology Department, Federal Fluminense University, Niterói, Brazil

Bruno Pessoa

Marco antonio araujo leite, silmar teixeira.

Contributions: the authors contributed equally.

The five senses have specific ways to receive environmental information and lead to central nervous system. The perception of time is the sum of stimuli associated with cognitive processes and environmental changes. Thus, the perception of time requires a complex neural mechanism and may be changed by emotional state, level of attention, memory and diseases. Despite this knowledge, the neural mechanisms of time perception are not yet fully understood. The objective is to relate the mechanisms involved the neurofunctional aspects, theories, executive functions and pathologies that contribute the understanding of temporal perception. Articles form 1980 to 2015 were searched by using the key themes: neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, theories, time cells, memory, schizophrenia, depression, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and Parkinson’s disease combined with the term perception of time. We evaluated 158 articles within the inclusion criteria for the purpose of the study. We conclude that research about the holdings of the frontal cortex, parietal, basal ganglia, cerebellum and hippocampus have provided advances in the understanding of the regions related to the perception of time. In neurological and psychiatric disorders, the understanding of time depends on the severity of the diseases and the type of tasks.

Introduction

Time perception is a concept that describes the subjective experience of time and how an individual interprets the duration of an event. 1 Depending on the occasion, people may feel that time passes quickly or slowly. In addition to being related to several cognitive and behavioral actions, it is also due to the way in which our central nervous system processes environmental information ( Figure 1 ). 2 Distortions of time interpretation are also associated with some psychiatric and neurologic diseases. 3 Time perception has attracted considerable attention from researchers who aim to develop an understanding of the neural functionality of time perception and its relation to some diseases. 4 , 5 There is a consensus that individuals who suffer from impairments of time perception lack a specific pathway that carries key information about the passage of time from the external environment to the brain. 6 Temporal perception includes all sensory channels ; however, it is not clear as to the extent to which these representations are mediated by neural structures. 4 Moreover, the diverse brain regions associated with the sense of time (frontal cortex, basal ganglia, parietal cortex, cerebellum, and hippocampus) are responsible for receiving, associating and interpreting information in fractions of milliseconds, seconds and minutes. 7 These neural processes are only completely perceived through the participation of memory, attention, and other emotional states. However, on many occasions, time can be hyper or hypo estimated. 8 For instance, when we are looking forward to an important event, such as the day we are going on vacation, time seems to pass more slowly than when the vacation is coming to an end and we are close to return to work.

The central nervous system has a critical role in high hierarchy timing process and executive functions such as memory (freeimages.com/Adrian Boca), decision-making (picjumbo.com) and attention (freeimages.com/Steve Knight). 2

Different time perceptions can be associated with differences in the way we perceive daily activities as well as being influenced by psychiatric and neurological diseases. Studies involving individuals who suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression, schizophrenia and/or Parkinson’s disease (PD) have revealed that individuals with such conditions often have an impaired time perception. 9 Interest in this area has resulted in the development of several models that were specifically designed to define how the central nervous system analyzes and encodes time perception. These models enable a better understanding of some of the phenomena associated with time, such as those relating to memory and attention. Some of these models are more widely accepted by the scientific community than others, and a universally accepted, precise mode that defines the relationship between the central nervous system and time perception has yet to be developed. 10 With this in mind, this paper aim to review the fundamental theories and ideas that are considered to be of strategic importance in the development of an understanding of time perception. We will discuss the different models of time perception that have been developed and will describe the main theories that have emerged in relation to the brain regions, memory participation and neurological diseases associated with time perception. The first part of the paper describes the neuroanatomy involved in temporal processing and the second part describes how memory is related to the perception of time, as well as outlining some of the pathologies that distort time perception.

Materials and Methods

This study consisted of a literature review that involved English language research articles about time perception that were published between 1980 and 2015. Case reports, original papers, and reviews were included in this integrative review. Relevant articles were identified by performing a database search on the terms neuroanatomy, time cells, neurophysiology, theories, memory, schizophrenia, depression, Parkinson’s disease and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in combination with the phrase time perception. The results were analyzed and articles that were deemed to be relevant and of an acceptable global quality were included in the analysis.

We selected 10 articles for introduction, 90 articles matching terms time perception and neuroanatomy , 22 with hippocampus and time cells , 16 with time perception and memory , 20 about psychiatric diseases and time perception. After the selection, 158 articles fulfilled the goal and were included in this integrative review.

Time perception theories

The neural mechanisms involved in time count and codification are not clear yet fully understood. 11 Diverse models of time perception have been presented, some of which include neurobiological internal clocks; spectral time; state dependent; and linear and non-linear network models that are able to identify mistakes, learn and change strategies. 12 Of these, perhaps the best know is the internal clock, which is based on scalar expectancy theory. 13 Studies in this area often incorporate a pacemaker-switch-accumulator mechanism. The switch turns on the pacemaker, which is controlled by attention; 8 that is, when attention is focused on a stimulus that needs to be temporized, the switch closes, allowing the impulses sent by the pacemaker to flow into the accumulator. 14 On stimulus displacement, the switch reopens and interrupts the flow of the impulses. 15 Thus, time is estimated according to the numbers of impulses accumulated during the interval of time ( Figure 2 ). 16

The internal clock model is defined by three main components: a time processor (pacemaker); a switch ; an (accumulator). The internal clock has been associated with sensorial stimulis receivers by SNC (pacemaker) which may either acumulation or not in long term memory. Finally, the internal clock theory show the decision making. 12

The information processing model in relation to the time scalar theory has been studied in a range of contexts covering periods of time that range from seconds to minutes with the objective of characterizing the relationship between judgments of duration, deceleration of the internal clock and internal attention, and memory deficits. 17 Within these studies, different groups of participants have been involved in different tasks relating to the reproduction and production of time, time reaction, attention and memory. Many of the studies have demonstrated a relationship between time estimation and cognitive functions (processing and memory speed) and task period and age. 18 According Tse et al. 19 the brain only has access to a ratio of all the information you have processed, and this is distorted due to subjective expansion of time. In this case, a meter monitors the number of time information units. On the other hand, according to the state dependent model, temporal processing is codified on neural networks, 20 and can be explained by a complex nonlinear function of the stimulus interaction. 21

A neural network can include continuous activity (active state) and dependent properties of neural time (hidden state). 22 This model can be regarded as intrinsic of time, insofar as it is not based on the mechanisms that are considered to represent specialized timing. 23 Independent of the models, human beings estimate and distort time. 24 Thereby, time notion is dependent on intrinsic (emotional state) and extrinsic context (sensitive information), 25 in which relations between emotion and time do not distort the function of the internal clock but change how the clock adapts to events. 13 This indicates that there is no such thing as homogenous time, but rather multiple experiences of time, 26 and these reflect the way the brain adapts to diverse temporal scales. 27 In this way, the different models proposed are somewhat subjective and are limited in that they only demonstrate that differences in perceptions of time are linked to the quantity and characteristic of the oscillators. 12

Frontal cortex activity on time perception

The human being is able to process time duration as a result of adaptive functions involving neural regions ( Figure 1 ) 28 that are arranged according to the duration of the stimulus received. 29 Thereby, time perception depends on the interaction between the cortical structures linked to the internal clock and the areas involved with a specific task. 30 , 31 In this respect, the frontal cortex ( Figure 3 ) has been widely associated with temporal information processing in the short- and long-term memory. 32 , 33 Specifically, the role of the prefrontal cortex in terms of an individual’s estimation of a given time period relates to the storage and recovery of memory. 6 , 34

Cortical and subcortical areas involved in the time perception cerebral mechanisms. 1

When it is necessary associate attention among tasks, we do and tasks we left, we have to modify attention subjectively, and then time perception is triggered. In this moment, frontal lobe takes part due its relation with prospective memory activation to predict and monitor the accuracy of the time estimation. 35 In this context, frontal cortex is well developed and its relation to the memory storage has an important participation in detailed time duration. 36 Moreover, the modulation by brain neurochemistry and integration with other brain areas such as the cerebellum and basal ganglia have been highlighted by dopamine, 37 which appears to be related with perception of seconds to minutes, and associated to the frontostriatal circuitry. 38 On the other hand, the acetylcholine is related to memory and attention on tasks involving time perception, being also present on frontal cortex and parietal relations. 39 The role the frontal lobe plays in terms of time perception seems to differ according to the activities of the left and right hemisphere. Some authors support the theory that the activity of the right frontal lobe ceases when task duration is memorized, while frontal left activity helps to maintain attention until this point. 40 Dorsolateral prefrontal right cortex is considered as the region most involved in time perception. This have been observed in patients with lesions in the dorsolateral prefrontal right cortex, showing changes in the performance of temporal discrimination tasks. 41 The findings revealed that verbal estimation of time seems to be associated with the motor supplementary area, and that the presence of lesions in this region leads to modifications of the production of rhythm and the perception of the duration of tasks. Furthermore, models of dominant time associate the motor supplementary area with the specific region between the attention and the time accumulator. 42 On the other hand, Coull et al. 43 attested that the activities of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and supplementary motor areas are linked to the cognitive difficulties of a task, not to time perception. Moreover, Meck and Malapani analyzed the temporization of minutes and seconds and observed frontal bilateral activity in tasks involving memory work. 44

Time perception in basal ganglia

The basal ganglia (BG) ( Figure 3 ) facilitates the execution of motor control. 45 , 46 The BG is also associated with emotions, motivation and cognition ( Figure 1 ), 47-49 learning, procedural memory, reward, and reinforcement, addictive behavior development, formation of habits and time perception. 4 Specifically, some researchers have investigated the role the BG plays in terms of time perception. 50 Existing studies have compared the nucleus accumbens, putamen and caudate and dopamine mediation in time perception tasks performed by healthy subjects with those suffering from Parkinson’s disease. 51 , 52 Haber described the involvement of the BG on period time, particularly the dorsal striatum. 53 Representation of time is influenced by the striatum’s ability to detect similar patterns of cortical and thalamic oscillations, and then synchronize neural firing in response to different requirements of time perception. 54 This complies with the findings of Jones et al. , 55 who verified the involvement of BG in temporal processes of milliseconds and seconds, and also the role of dopamine in its modulation. They investigated 12 Parkinson’s disease patients with on and off dopamine medication together with 20 healthy subjects as they performed three tasks involving time perception. The results of this research suggested that BG integrity is necessary to the production of time in seconds, as well as time reproduction in short periods. Moreover, Coull et al. 56 observed that an individual’s accuracy of time perception is damaged by changes of dopamine on putamen, leading subjects to hyper or hypo estimate the passage of time. These effects were also noted in studies involving dopaminergic agonist and antagonist and on Parkinson’s disease patients. 55 As such, frontostriatal circuitry allows the representation of time period that contributes to the process by which the duration of motor acts is coded. The influence of BG on time perception seems to be related to adjustments to the motor component of time perception. 57

Organization of parietal cortex on time perception

The parietal cortex ( Figure 3 ) is known as a center of integration of sensory information, 58-60 and is related to a variety of cognitive functions. 61-63 Its anatomic-functional relations with the temporal and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex are also associated with action control and spatial reference. 64-66 In this context, parietal cortex is essential in planning movements based on sensory informations and codification of cognitive functions ( Figure 1 ). 67 , 68 Thus, the perception of external stimuli is integrated by parietal cortex to the time scales for a count of milliseconds and seconds intervals. 69

Parietal cortex is also associated to the magnitude theory, which proposes similarities among space, size, number, velocity and time. 1 , 70 The participation of the parietal cortex on time estimation and spatial orientation is difficult to be delimited. Although spatial regulation is related both to a static component and intervals of time perception (dynamic components), they are considered equivalent. In this context, a study evaluated these components and identified activation at left inferior parietal cortex. 71 Particularly, lateral intraparietal area (LIA) was associated to time perception. 72 Moreover, Maimon and Assad demonstrated a wider participation of neurons on LIA in timing the execution of movements in response to external stimuli. 73 They support the idea that activity of the LIA has a probability in determining if an event is about to occur. 69

Studies involving transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) have demonstrated changes in the right posterior parietal cortex during tasks involving time perception, 74 with the posterior parietal cortex functioning to mediate the adaptation of time processing. 75 Hayashi et al. 76 used functional magnetic resonance imaging and TMS in tasks that involved numerical discrimination and observed the simultaneous activation of the right intraparietal cortex (RIC) and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Their results demonstrated that the RIC modulates the degree of influence of interaction of numerosity and damage of precise time estimation. Besides, subjects who have suffered a right temporoparietal stroke are unable to discriminate sub-second temporal durations between two successive events. Thus, their perception of time is impaired due to the refractory period of stimuli. 77

Cerebellar activity on time perception

The cerebellum ( Figure 3 ) has connections with almost all central nervous system, directly or indirectly. 78 For a long time, the cerebellum was exclusively associated with motor functions, however it is involved en different processes motivation, attentional ( Figure 1 ), associative learning and proprioceptive. 13 , 79-82 Specifically, the participation of the cerebellum on the biological basis of time perception has been highlighted, 13 but its function is yet not well established. 83 It is believed that there are two systems of timing. The first, automatic , acts on motor circuits of the cerebellum is responsible by events of milliseconds. 6 , 84 The second, controlled cognitively , is formed by parietal and prefrontal areas linked to attention and memory, being responsible by periods of minutes. 85 A research analyzed patients with cerebellar lesion in tasks of discriminate time with intervals of 400 ms and 4s and noted damage into perception of milliseconds and seconds. 28

The cerebellum and BG integrate proprioceptive informations during the motor task and the time perception mechanisms. 86 The processes of time synchronization seem to be related with the lateral cerebellum, while the mechanisms of time aceleration with the BG. 87 In this sense, the cerebellum encodesdiscrete periods of time, whilst the BG take part on the perception of rhythms more regular. 88 , 89 Specifically, it has been observed that lateral cerebellar hemispheres have a wide participation on time perception. 90 Moreover, Purkinje cells are broadly active when the time is determined by the interval between the conditional and unconditional stimulus. 91 Gooch et al. 92 conducted a study with patients who had cerebellar lesions and observed a biggest effect on activities related to milliseconds. Their findings suggesting the damage on left hemisphere represents changes on perception of milliseconds and minutes of perceptual tasks. 11 A probable explanation is that lesions on this region make the clock mechanism be executed slowly and accumulate fewer beats ( Figure 2 ).

Moreover, the cerebellum participates in feedback control of motor activities, which commonly involve sub- and supra-second intervals reflecting changes occurring during a task. The examples of such changes are those occurring over sub-second intervals in the activity of muscles to produce a change in the direction of movements of the limbs, hands and fingers. Thus, the circuits associated with feedback activities within the cerebellum represent time information in sub- to supra-second range resulting from its role in successful motor interactions involving external physical time parameters, such as the speed and duration. After a successful execution of a task, the time information, represented within the cerebellar circuits, is transferred to inbuilt oscillators via modular connections, 93 which would help to calibrate the inbuilt neuronal clock mechanisms associated with various tasks. The role of the feedback processes in the interval timing functions of the cerebellum is supported by a study that showed increased variability in subjects with cerebellar lesions, as one of the main roles of a feedback process is to maintain a normal range. 94 , 95 The unipolar brush cells can represents intervals of time on cerebellar cortex. 96 These cells are involved on excitatory synaptic input delayed in response to cerebellum presynaptic stimulation, it is believed that the temporal codification depends on the stimulation frequency and can cause delays that range from zero until hundred of milliseconds. 97 In this way, computational models have suggested that the mechanisms of time on behavioral tasks dependents of the cerebellum are calculated specifically on the cerebellar cortex. 98 However, some researchers have defended the idea that the cerebellum is not the focus of an internal clock , it only provide signals about events. In this case, the cerebellum and cortical regions are associated, as the cerebellum regulating temporally the neurons activity on these regions. 99 , 100 Besides, O’Reilly et al. 101 noticed a bigger interaction between the cerebellum and the intraparietal region when a temporal aspect is added to a perceptual prevision.

Hippocampus and time cells

The hippocampus ( Figure 3 ) is a structure of the CNS which is associated with memory formation ( Figure 1 ), 102 environmental exploratory process and the initial storage and transition of the ability to acquire, retain and recall, information relevant to the long-term memory. 103-105 The types of memory ( e.g. , episodic and working) require a temporal sequence of successful encodings between events to consolidate and evoke memories. 106 The memory acquisition corresponding to the input informations by means of external sensors are directed to neural systems to be stored and are selected according to the extent to which an individual perceives an event to be important ( e.g. , emotional situations such as the wedding of a child) or the frequency with which the event takes place ( e.g. , repetitive tasks such as training animals). Once the information is retained for a long period or permanently occurs, it is consolidated in the memory and can be evoked later. 107 , 108 To evoke memory, time perception is essential in the processing of sequential events, 109 and includes the participation of the hippocampus for organization and recruitment of episodic memory. 108 , 110

The role of the hippocampus in time perception was explored in 1984 through experiments in mice (control and injuries fimbirafornix groups) which consisted in carrying out training tasks in radial arm maze to discriminate auditory signals that differed in duration (2 or 8s) and peak range with visual signal 5s. The results revealed that the precision of the rate and duration of auditory discrimination were not affected by the injury, however, the point of subjective equality was shifted to a shorter duration. From the peak interval, the injured rats had a shift to the right in relation to the objective time of 5s, meaning that lesions in this region impair working memory. 111 Thus, various studies started with the objective of understanding the involvement of the hippocampus in time perception. For this proposition, the researchers performed various types of intervention, among them, injuring the medial septal area, resection of the temporal lobe, selective dorsal hippocampus injuries and total destruction of the hippocampus. 112 Meck, Matell and Church isolated the effects of the hippocampus in specific phases of the temporal memory processing, 113 providing an analysis of the factors that contributed to the hippocampal influence. In that proposition, an injury to the fimbria-fornix and observed change in information retention time in the working memory and distortion in the content of the reference memory is carried out. This means that an injury to the fornix may cause difficulty remembering long-term information. In addition, neuroimaging studies show that the formation and maintenance of memory are performed with adjuvant action of the hippocampus, associated with the connections of cortical structures such as the frontal and parietal cortex. 114 Gorchetchnikov and Grossberg propose that the hippocampus on the temporal processing is performed by the entorhinal cortex circuits, dentate gyrus and CA1 areas, CA2, and CA3 corresponding to the hippocampal circuit regions that act at the gateway to the entorhinal cortex. 108 , 115 In particular, the interaction between these regions of the brain transform temporal scales and stimuli sequences in a set of codes that may be consolidated in memory. The adaptive learning models showed a spectrum of different hippocampal cells in synchronization and modulation on learning daily or conditional events. 116

Timing of activities and organization of events, for example, everyday tasks like remembering a stored object, receive acting hippocampal neurons called time cells. 108 The time cells represent the temporal processing of recruitment events memory such as fear conditioning task. 117-119 Eichenbaum in their review article demonstrated the activities of time cells in studies involving physiological and behavioral approaches in animals and humans. 108 Similarly, neurophysiological studies using classical conditioning, which corresponds to the basic form of learning involving a simple response or a complex series of responses to certain stimuli, suggesting that occur a time series involved in evoking memories consolidated resulting from repetitive tasks. 120 , 121 Moreover, another study suggested the involvement of the hippocampus in standard separation time using experiments in which rats learned to associate different durations of time intervals with odor stimuli. The researchers found that the hippocampus played an essential role in the behavior of rats in terms of their ability to explore a maze based on odors and to keep track of time elapsed over a course of several minutes. 122

The performance of the time cells have demonstrated temporal organization of sequential events that compose a lived experience; for example, something traumatic or pleasurable. Kraus et al. 119 observed this in a study, which time cells were deemed to have an influence on a rat’s perception of spatial location in mazes. The timekeeping on treadmill tasks was observed concomitantly with neuroimaging to record the neuronal firing activity that occurred when the tasks were performed. The researchers observed neuronal firing in large parts of hippocampal neurons at the moment which the rat performed the task. This result demonstrated that neuronal activation could not be attributed to residual odors; for example, something that could guide the rat to perform better in the task, thereby proving that the rats’ behavior was strongly influenced by time and distance. This finding suggests that experience memories are organized through active participation of the hippocampus in terms of order of occurrence and the frequency or importance of events. 108 , 123

Time perception and memory

All people are continually involved in temporal activities, such as controlling the timing of a movement, expressing general knowledge, representing events and remembering past episodes. 2 , 124 This information is filed into a system of storage (memory) and can be recovered when requested. 125 In this context, human memory plays an important role in terms of our perceptions. 126 Specifically, four systems of memory are involved to a greater or lesser extent in different experiences. 124 Namely, the semantic memory (responsible for processing information, like concepts, linguistic expressions and facts); the procedural memory (involved in the performance of relatively automatic movements and of learned movements); the working memory (responsible for processing information about current or recent past events) and the episodic memory (responsible for processing past personal information). 127 , 128

Pan and Luo observerd that working memory is involved in the perception of time. 129 This fact was noted in tasks that required planning and time control of the movement to timing the intervals referred to the sequences of automated movements. 130 Moreover, time perception is involved with diverse cognitive processes. 131 , 132 Existing studies have noted that the less attention is paid to task, the greater the reduction in subjective time perception. 2 , 133 Studies on patients with amnesia demonstrated that individuals who suffer from this condition are less able to precisely assess temporal judgments of short duration (less than 10 seconds) and more likely to underestimate longer temporal durations (more than 10 or 20 seconds); however, these studies linked the deficits only to a dysfunction of the long-term memory. 134-136 Based on this notion, Pouthas and Perbal conducted further research using tasks which involved the reproduction of time and production to assess the capacities of distribution that a patient with amnesia showns in terms of selective deficit on episodic memory. 18 Some studies on time perception dysfunctions in patients with PD have explained such impairment in terms of an internal timing mechanism. 137 In this way, memory is associated due to the difficulty presented by the patient with PD on the interpretation of time. 57 , 132 , 138 Similarly, the performance of patients with PD was assessed in a time reproduction task which was dependent on memory and during a time production task which required the participants to identify timing internal periods. 132 During the reproduction task, judgments relating to duration varied more in patients with than without PD, and this correlated with the gravity of the illness and the extent of the memory impairment.

Diseases evoke distortions on time perception

Despite the diverse components that are involved in the interpretation of reality, it is well known that time is essential to information processing because it allows individuals an opportunity to perceive their surrounding environment and is related to the detection of many events. 13 , 38 The term time has also been used to refer to an estimation of the duration of an event. 6 The ability of a human being to estimate time is considered a stable function that may vary as a result of the development of some diseases, toxic situations or psychiatric disorders. 12 Time is subjectively estimated by a subject and involves the participation of an internal clock responsible for measuring the objective time without the influence of external stimuli. 44 This section describes some of the common illnesses associated with distortions of the time perception.

Depression is a common affective disorder that is characterized by a sensation of emptiness or sadness. For some people, depression is associated with the perception that time is passing very slowly; i.e. , depression can alter an individual’s subjective experience of time. 14 Some patients with depression report that time passes slower than normal or even stops completely (fewer pulses are accumulated by time units). 14 , 139 , 140 However, this subjective sensation does not indicate an intrinsic change in time perception; that is to say that the affected individuals experience time in the same way as others, but with a kind of desynchronization. 8 This fact was observed in a study in which the participants classified a signal between 400 and 1600 milliseconds as being short or long. The results showed that the higher the depression, minor is the duration of time perceived. 141 Furthermore, Oberfeld et al. 142 studied interval times (verbal estimation, production, and reproduction of time) in patients with depression but did not identify any changes in time intervals.

The attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurological disturb characterized by impairment of the executive function. 4 Considering time perception an executive function, can be established relations with changes on this ability in patients with ADHD. 143 Moreover, time perception frequently involves the presentation of stimuli pairs with duration relatively short (usually in milliseconds) to the subject who should assess the differences in the duration of these intervals. 144 A study involving children with ADHD reported temporal discrimination deficit of periods of time too short (between 1000 and 1300 milliseconds). 144 By the other side, some studies confirmed that occur difference on time duration discrimination in subjects with ADHD, but in this case the subjects were less precise in discriminate longer time duration. 145 , 146

The schizophrenia is considered a complex and serious psychiatric disturb, characterized by symptoms of hallucinations and delusions associated to thought disorganization. Its pathogenesis remains unknown, but can generate deficits on some attention processes, memory, cognition, executive functions and perception. 147 , 148 Researches pointed that schizophrenia can be related with change on time’s processing. This affirmative considers clinic symptoms like hallucinations, psychomotor poverty, delirium and poverty of speech. 12 , 149 , 150 Clinical and experimental findings indicate that patients who suffer from schizophrenia are able to estimate time less accurately than healthy subjects. In addition to attention deficits, schizophrenia is also associated with the impairment of working memory. 148 However, studies of episodic memory have suggested that patients who suffer from schizophrenia can remember that an event occurred, but do not know when it occurred. These results indicate that patients do not lose memory, but experience a disorganization of time perception. 151 , 152 Thus, to better understand the changes that emerge as a result of schizophrenia, researchers should assess time perception, 148 due to relationship between schizophrenia and time perception brain regions. 90 The PD is accompanied by cognitive and motor changes, including disorderly movement time, usually expressed as bradykinesia and/or akinesia and by longer time to processes an information, named as bradyphrenia. 153 The PD is characterized by dysfunction of the BG circuitry due a degenerative process on the nigrostriatal pathway that causes progressive death of cells on the compact part of substantia nigra. It causes less dopamine on striado and leads to an indirect form of time perception’s dysfunction. 12 Patients with PD present increased reaction time, attenuation of movement and of the information processing. They also show speech impairment and decreased ability of keeping fixed rhythms on motor tasks. 154-156 Studies involving patients with PD are frequently performed within scalar theory to observe temporal processing on seconds and minutes. 157 , 158 The frontostriatal circuitries may participate in the estimation of long intervals of time and this consists in one of the theories to explain the changes on time perception in patients with PD. 153

Conclusions

Regardless of being taken by emotion, relaxed, hurried or talking on the phone, time is part of our day to day and is present in all moments. In this context, the theories of time perception and its modeling support the existence of multiple clocks , but without a conclusive form of its functionality. Moreover, subjects with neurological and psychiatric damages have difficult on perceive and organize the time, frequently due disorders on attention, memory and neurotransmitters action as dopamine and acetylcholine, thence the difficulties of perceive time and related it to actions of present and future, affecting cognitive and motor resources. Furthermore, manifestations of disorders resulting of frontal brain lesions, BG, cerebellum, hippocampus and parietal cortex become more investigated in order to answer which models are involved and its neural functional relations with time perception.

Time Perception Essays

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How To Tackle The Weirdest Supplemental Essay Prompts For This Application Cycle

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Writing the college essay

How do you write a letter to a friend that shows you’re a good candidate for the University of Pennsylvania? What reading list will help the Columbia University admissions committee understand your interdisciplinary interests? How can you convey your desire to attend Yale by inventing a course description for a topic you’re interested in studying?

These are the challenges students must overcome when writing their supplemental essays . Supplemental essays are a critical component of college applications—like the personal statement, they provide students with the opportunity to showcase their authentic voice and perspective beyond the quantitative elements of their applications. However, unlike the personal essay, supplemental essays allow colleges to read students’ responses to targeted prompts and evaluate their candidacy for their specific institution. For this reason, supplemental essay prompts are often abstract, requiring students to get creative, read between the lines, and ditch the traditional essay-writing format when crafting their responses.

While many schools simply want to know “why do you want to attend our school?” others break the mold, inviting students to think outside of the box and answer prompts that are original, head-scratching, or downright weird. This year, the following five colleges pushed students to get creative—if you’re struggling to rise to the challenge, here are some tips for tackling their unique prompts:

University of Chicago

Prompt: We’re all familiar with green-eyed envy or feeling blue, but what about being “caught purple-handed”? Or “tickled orange”? Give an old color-infused expression a new hue and tell us what it represents. – Inspired by Ramsey Bottorff, Class of 2026

What Makes it Unique: No discussion of unique supplemental essay prompts would be complete without mentioning the University of Chicago, a school notorious for its puzzling and original prompts (perhaps the most well-known of these has been the recurring prompt “Find x”). This prompt challenges you to invent a new color-based expression, encouraging both linguistic creativity and a deep dive into the emotional or cultural connotations of color. It’s a prompt that allows you to play with language, think abstractly, and show off your ability to forge connections between concepts that aren’t typically linked—all qualities that likewise demonstrate your preparedness for UChicago’s unique academic environment.

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How to Answer it: While it may be easy to get distracted by the open-ended nature of the prompt, remember that both the substance and structure of your response should give some insight into your personality, perspective, and characteristics. With this in mind, begin by considering the emotions, experiences, or ideas that most resonate with you. Then, use your imagination to consider how a specific color could represent that feeling or concept. Remember that the prompt is ultimately an opportunity to showcase your creativity and original way of looking at the world, so your explanation does not need to be unnecessarily deep or complex—if you have a playful personality, convey your playfulness in your response; if you are known for your sarcasm, consider how you can weave in your biting wit; if you are an amateur poet, consider how you might take inspiration from poetry as you write, or offer a response in the form of a poem.

The goal is to take a familiar concept and turn it into something new and meaningful through a creative lens. Use this essay to showcase your ability to think inventively and to draw surprising connections between language and life.

Harvard University

Prompt: Top 3 things your roommates might like to know about you.

What Makes it Unique: This prompt is unique in both form and substance—first, you only have 150 words to write about all 3 things. Consider using a form other than a traditional essay or short answer response, such as a bullet list or short letter. Additionally, note that the things your roommate might like to learn about you do not necessarily overlap with the things you would traditionally share with an admissions committee. The aim of the prompt is to get to know your quirks and foibles—who are you as a person and a friend? What distinguishes you outside of academics and accolades?

How to Answer it: First and foremost, feel free to get creative with your response to this prompt. While you are producing a supplemental essay and thus a professional piece of writing, the prompt invites you to share more personal qualities, and you should aim to demonstrate your unique characteristics in your own voice. Consider things such as: How would your friends describe you? What funny stories do your parents and siblings share that encapsulate your personality? Or, consider what someone might want to know about living with you: do you snore? Do you have a collection of vintage posters? Are you particularly fastidious? While these may seem like trivial things to mention, the true creativity is in how you connect these qualities to deeper truths about yourself—perhaps your sleepwalking is consistent with your reputation for being the first to raise your hand in class or speak up about a cause you’re passionate about. Perhaps your living conditions are a metaphor for how your brain works—though it looks like a mess to everyone else, you have a place for everything and know exactly where to find it. Whatever qualities you choose, embrace the opportunity to think outside of the box and showcase something that admissions officers won’t learn about anywhere else on your application.

University of Pennsylvania

Prompt: Write a short thank-you note to someone you have not yet thanked and would like to acknowledge.

What Makes it Unique: Breaking from the traditional essay format, this supplement invites you to write directly to a third party in the form of a 150-200 word long letter. The challenge in answering this distinct prompt is to remember that your letter should say as much about you, your unique qualities and what you value as it does about the recipient—all while not seeming overly boastful or contrived.

How to Answer it: As you select a recipient, consider the relationships that have been most formative in your high school experience—writing to someone who has played a large part in your story will allow the admissions committee some insight into your development and the meaningful relationships that guided you on your journey. Once you’ve identified the person, craft a thank-you note that is specific and heartfelt—unlike other essays, this prompt invites you to be sentimental and emotional, as long as doing so would authentically convey your feelings of gratitude. Describe the impact they’ve had on you, what you’ve learned from them, and how their influence has shaped your path. For example, if you’re thanking a teacher, don’t just say they helped you become a better student—explain how their encouragement gave you the confidence to pursue your passions. Keep the tone sincere and personal, avoid clichés and focus on the unique role this person has played in your life.

University of Notre Dame

Prompt: What compliment are you most proud of receiving, and why does it mean so much to you?

What Makes it Unique: This prompt is unique in that it invites students to share something about themselves by reflecting on someone else’s words in 50-100 words.

How to Answer it: The key to answering this prompt is to avoid focusing too much on the complement itself and instead focus on your response to receiving it and why it was so important to you. Note that this prompt is not an opportunity to brag about your achievements, but instead to showcase what truly matters to you. Select a compliment that truly speaks to who you are and what you value. It could be related to your character, work ethic, kindness, creativity, or any other quality that you hold in high regard. The compliment doesn’t have to be grand or come from someone with authority—it could be something small but significant that left a lasting impression on you, or it could have particular meaning for you because it came from someone you didn’t expect it to come from. Be brief in setting the stage and explaining the context of the compliment—what is most important is your reflection on its significance and how it shaped your understanding of yourself.

Stanford University

Prompt: List five things that are important to you.

What Makes it Unique: This prompt’s simplicity is what makes it so challenging. Stanford asks for a list, not an essay, which means you have very limited space (50 words) to convey something meaningful about yourself. Additionally, the prompt does not specify what these “things” must be—they could be a physical item, an idea, a concept, or even a pastime. Whatever you choose, these five items should add depth to your identity, values, and priorities.

How to Answer it: Start by brainstorming what matters most to you—these could be values, activities, people, places, or even abstract concepts. The key is to choose items or concepts that, when considered together, provide a comprehensive snapshot of who you are. For example, you might select something tangible and specific such as “an antique telescope gifted by my grandfather” alongside something conceptual such as “the willingness to admit when you’re wrong.” The beauty of this prompt is that it doesn’t require complex sentences or elaborate explanations—just a clear and honest reflection of what you hold dear. Be thoughtful in your selections, and use this prompt to showcase your creativity and core values.

While the supplemental essays should convey something meaningful about you, your values, and your unique qualifications for the university to which you are applying, the best essays are those that are playful, original, and unexpected. By starting early and taking the time to draft and revise their ideas, students can showcase their authentic personalities and distinguish themselves from other applicants through their supplemental essays.

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• Afghanistan

Take the Taliban to The Hague for What They’re Doing to Women

W hen the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan three years ago this month, one of the first things they did was paint over the images of women on billboards and murals. Since then, women and girls themselves are being erased. Girls cannot go to high school, women are officially banned from working in most jobs, movement outside the home is heavily restricted and often punished. Many of the women who defied these impositions have been tortured and detained. Others are in hiding. The flogging and stoning of women in public has resumed as a matter of policy.

Yet, the world looks away. There are dedicated journalists and human rights advocates who continue to report on Afghan women, girls, and minorities, but the horrors inflicted on them have long slipped off the front pages. Governments occasionally issue statements of concern but nothing more. It is only on moments like this, the third anniversary of the Taliban’s takeover, that we remember Afghanistan. For the rest of the year, Afghans are kept out of sight, quietly abandoned to their fate, as if nothing can be done.

But there is something that can be done: the Taliban can be held accountable. The militant group is responsible for some of the most serious breaches of international criminal law. Just as the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants against Russian President Vladimir Putin and five senior government and military officials, it could do the same with individual Taliban leaders. The ICC has the jurisdiction, as there is already an investigation on Afghanistan. The persecution of women and girls constitutes a crime against humanity—one of the most serious categories of crimes, along with genocide and war crimes. The Prosecutor can prioritize the investigation, gather evidence, and request arrest warrants.

The Taliban can also be brought before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also known as the “World Court.” The ICJ decides cases that are brought between states. It is currently hearing important human rights related cases, including on torture, racial discrimination, and genocide. As the group in control of Afghanistan, the Taliban can be brought before the court to answer for its violations of the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the main treaty protecting women’s rights, which has been ratified by 189 countries. All it needs is for one country to bring the case. The organization I lead, the Open Society Foundations, has detailed in a report published this year how this can be done. We’re in a moment when, amid the many horrors around the world, dozens of countries are seeking justice in international courts for the most serious crimes, whether it’s on Ukraine, Israel and Gaza, Syria, or Myanmar. Afghanistan should be on that list, too.

For the past three years, the international community has pursued a failed strategy of applying economic pressure on the one hand and seeking engagement on the other. Neither approach has worked in restraining the Taliban, and both have made the situation for Afghan women and girls worse. The withdrawal of international assistance and the imposition of sanctions has plunged the Afghan people deep into a humanitarian crisis, with more than 23 million in need of urgent assistance, most of them women and girls. And the talks with the Taliban have prioritized issues like regional security and narcotics, but never the rights of women and girls. There are observers who point to positives, saying there is now peace in a country that has not known it for 40 years. But for half the population, the war continues, and they are the targets.

Read More: The Women of Afghanistan Won’t Be Silenced Anymore

By taking the Taliban to The Hague, there can be a new approach—one that centers the rights of the Afghan people. The Taliban is not going to cooperate with either court, and will denounce the proceedings as a conspiracy against it. But the courts’ decisions can set clear parameters for the international community’s engagement with the Taliban and give a voice to their victims. When I worked as a human rights investigator on post-conflict situations, including in the wake of the genocide in Rwanda , the women I spoke to didn’t just want their perpetrators punished. They wanted the crimes against them acknowledged , the truth of what happened to them heard, and the futures that were stolen from them returned.

For all their defiance, the Taliban is vulnerable to international pressure. They crave legitimacy for their regime. They want to take up seats at the United Nations as the representatives of Afghanistan and to have diplomatic relations with the neighboring region and the rest of the world. This is where engagement is important, but it must be principled. There can be cooperation with the Taliban as far it helps the people of Afghanistan, especially on easing the humanitarian and economic crisis. But the rest is up to the Taliban. They can begin by living up to the promises they made to the world when they said they wouldn’t resume the cruelties they inflicted the last time they were in power.

There are also grave dangers in not pursuing justice, in allowing these brutal practices to slowly become accepted, and creating a world of exceptions when it comes to the rights of women, where some are entitled to them and others are not, just because of where they live.

Women’s rights in Afghanistan have never been a foreign-imposed project, as some claim, alien to the country. It is the women of Afghanistan who always fought for them, whether it was securing laws to protect women from violence under previous governments or whether it’s resisting the Taliban from exile, on the streets, and even from inside their homes. We owe it to them to stand with them in this fight.

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Fact-Checking Claims About Tim Walz’s Record

Republicans have leveled inaccurate or misleading attacks on Mr. Walz’s response to protests in the summer of 2020, his positions on immigration and his role in the redesign of Minnesota’s flag.

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By Linda Qiu

Since Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota was announced as the Democratic nominee for vice president, the Trump campaign and its allies have gone on the attack.

Mr. Walz, a former teacher and football coach from Nebraska who served in the National Guard, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006 and then as Minnesota’s governor in 2018. His branding of former President Donald J. Trump as “weird” this year caught on among Democrats and helped catapult him into the national spotlight and to the top of Vice President Kamala Harris’s list of potential running mates.

The Republican accusations, which include questions over his military service , seem intended at undercutting a re-energized campaign after President Biden stepped aside and Ms. Harris emerged as his replacement at the top of the ticket. Mr. Trump and his allies have criticized, sometimes inaccurately, Mr. Walz’s handling of protests in his state, his immigration policies, his comments about a ladder factory and the redesign of his state’s flag.

Here’s a fact check of some claims.

What Was Said

“Because if we remember the rioting in the summer of 2020, Tim Walz was the guy who let rioters burn down Minneapolis.” — Senator JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican nominee for vice president, during a rally on Wednesday in Philadelphia

This is exaggerated. Mr. Walz has faced criticism for not quickly activating the National Guard to quell civil unrest in Minneapolis in the summer of 2020 after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer. But claims that he did not respond at all, or that the city burned down, are hyperbolic.

Mr. Floyd was murdered on May 25, 2020, and demonstrators took to the streets the next day . The protests intensified, with some vandalizing vehicles and setting fires. More than 700 state troopers and officers with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ mobile response team were deployed on May 26 to help the city’s police officers, according to a 2022 independent assessment by the state’s Department of Public Safety of the response to the unrest.

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NeurIPS 2024 Datasets and Benchmarks Track

If you'd like to become a reviewer for the track, or recommend someone, please use this form .

The Datasets and Benchmarks track serves as a venue for high-quality publications, talks, and posters on highly valuable machine learning datasets and benchmarks, as well as a forum for discussions on how to improve dataset development. Datasets and benchmarks are crucial for the development of machine learning methods, but also require their own publishing and reviewing guidelines. For instance, datasets can often not be reviewed in a double-blind fashion, and hence full anonymization will not be required. On the other hand, they do require additional specific checks, such as a proper description of how the data was collected, whether they show intrinsic bias, and whether they will remain accessible. The Datasets and Benchmarks track is proud to support the open source movement by encouraging submissions of open-source libraries and tools that enable or accelerate ML research.

The previous editions of the Datasets and Benchmarks track were highly successful; you can view the accepted papers from 2021 , 2002 , and 2023 , and the winners of the best paper awards 2021 , 2022 and 2023

CRITERIA. W e are aiming for an equally stringent review as the main conference, yet better suited to datasets and benchmarks. Submissions to this track will be reviewed according to a set of criteria and best practices specifically designed for datasets and benchmarks , as described below. A key criterion is accessibility: datasets should be available and accessible , i.e. the data can be found and obtained without a personal request to the PI, and any required code should be open source. We encourage the authors to use Croissant format ( https://mlcommons.org/working-groups/data/croissant/ ) to document their datasets in machine readable way.   Next to a scientific paper, authors should also submit supplementary materials such as detail on how the data was collected and organised, what kind of information it contains, how it should be used ethically and responsibly, as well as how it will be made available and maintained.

RELATIONSHIP TO NeurIPS.  Submissions to the track will be part of the main NeurIPS conference , presented alongside the main conference papers. Accepted papers will be officially published in the NeurIPS proceedings .

SUBMISSIONS.  There will be one deadline this year. It is also still possible to submit datasets and benchmarks to the main conference (under the usual review process), but dual submission to both is not allowed (unless you retracted your paper from the main conference). We also cannot transfer papers from the main track to the D&B track. Authors can choose to submit either single-blind or double-blind . If it is possible to properly review the submission double-blind, i.e., reviewers do not need access to non-anonymous repositories to review the work, then authors can also choose to submit the work anonymously. Papers will not be publicly visible during the review process. Only accepted papers will become visible afterward. The reviews themselves are not visible during the review phase but will be published after decisions have been made. The datasets themselves should be accessible to reviewers but can be publicly released at a later date (see below). New authors cannot be added after the abstract deadline and they should have an OpenReview profile by the paper deadline. NeurIPS does not tolerate any collusion whereby authors secretly cooperate with reviewers, ACs or SACs to obtain favourable reviews.

SCOPE. This track welcomes all work on data-centric machine learning research (DMLR) and open-source libraries and tools that enable or accelerate ML research, covering ML datasets and benchmarks as well as algorithms, tools, methods, and analyses for working with ML data. This includes but is not limited to:

• New datasets, or carefully and thoughtfully designed (collections of) datasets based on previously available data.
• Data generators and reinforcement learning environments.
• Data-centric AI methods and tools, e.g. to measure and improve data quality or utility, or studies in data-centric AI that bring important new insight.
• Advanced practices in data collection and curation that are of general interest even if the data itself cannot be shared.
• Frameworks for responsible dataset development, audits of existing datasets, identifying significant problems with existing datasets and their use
• Benchmarks on new or existing datasets, as well as benchmarking tools.
• In-depth analyses of machine learning challenges and competitions (by organisers and/or participants) that yield important new insight.
• Systematic analyses of existing systems on novel datasets yielding important new insight.

Read our original blog post for more about why we started this track.

Important dates

• Abstract submission deadline: May 29, 2024
• Full paper submission and co-author registration deadline: Jun 5, 2024
• Supplementary materials submission deadline: Jun 12, 2024
• Review deadline - Jul 24, 2024
• Release of reviews and start of Author discussions on OpenReview: Aug 07, 2024
• Rebuttal deadline - Aug 16, 2024
• End of author/reviewer discussions on OpenReview: Aug 31, 2024
• Author notification: Sep 26, 2024
• Camera-ready deadline: Oct 30, 2024 AOE

Note: The site will start accepting submissions on April 1 5 , 2024.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Q: My work is in scope for this track but possibly also for the main conference. Where should I submit it?

A: This is ultimately your choice. Consider the main contribution of the submission and how it should be reviewed. If the main contribution is a new dataset, benchmark, or other work that falls into the scope of the track (see above), then it is ideally reviewed accordingly. As discussed in our blog post, the reviewing procedures of the main conference are focused on algorithmic advances, analysis, and applications, while the reviewing in this track is equally stringent but designed to properly assess datasets and benchmarks. Other, more practical considerations are that this track allows single-blind reviewing (since anonymization is often impossible for hosted datasets) and intended audience, i.e., make your work more visible for people looking for datasets and benchmarks.

Q: How will paper accepted to this track be cited?

A: Accepted papers will appear as part of the official NeurIPS proceedings.

Q: Do I need to submit an abstract beforehand?

A: Yes, please check the important dates section for more information.

Q: My dataset requires open credentialized access. Can I submit to this track?

A: This will be possible on the condition that a credentialization is necessary for the public good (e.g. because of ethically sensitive medical data), and that an established credentialization procedure is in place that is 1) open to a large section of the public, 2) provides rapid response and access to the data, and 3) is guaranteed to be maintained for many years. A good example here is PhysioNet Credentialing, where users must first understand how to handle data with human subjects, yet is open to anyone who has learned and agrees with the rules. This should be seen as an exceptional measure, and NOT as a way to limit access to data for other reasons (e.g. to shield data behind a Data Transfer Agreement). Misuse would be grounds for desk rejection. During submission, you can indicate that your dataset involves open credentialized access, in which case the necessity, openness, and efficiency of the credentialization process itself will also be checked.

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

A submission consists of:

• Please carefully follow the Latex template for this track when preparing proposals. We follow the NeurIPS format, but with the appropriate headings, and without hiding the names of the authors. Download the template as a bundle here .
• Papers should be submitted via OpenReview
• Reviewing is in principle single-blind, hence the paper should not be anonymized. In cases where the work can be reviewed equally well anonymously, anonymous submission is also allowed.
• During submission, you can add a public link to the dataset or benchmark data. If the dataset can only be released later, you must include instructions for reviewers on how to access the dataset. This can only be done after the first submission by sending an official note to the reviewers in OpenReview. We highly recommend making the dataset publicly available immediately or before the start of the NeurIPS conference. In select cases, requiring solid motivation, the release date can be stretched up to a year after the submission deadline.
• Dataset documentation and intended uses. Recommended documentation frameworks include datasheets for datasets , dataset nutrition labels , data statements for NLP , data cards , and accountability frameworks .
• URL to website/platform where the dataset/benchmark can be viewed and downloaded by the reviewers. 
• URL to Croissant metadata record documenting the dataset/benchmark available for viewing and downloading by the reviewers. You can create your Croissant metadata using e.g. the Python library available here: https://github.com/mlcommons/croissant
• Author statement that they bear all responsibility in case of violation of rights, etc., and confirmation of the data license.
• Hosting, licensing, and maintenance plan. The choice of hosting platform is yours, as long as you ensure access to the data (possibly through a curated interface) and will provide the necessary maintenance.
• Links to access the dataset and its metadata. This can be hidden upon submission if the dataset is not yet publicly available but must be added in the camera-ready version. In select cases, e.g when the data can only be released at a later date, this can be added afterward (up to a year after the submission deadline). Simulation environments should link to open source code repositories
• The dataset itself should ideally use an open and widely used data format. Provide a detailed explanation on how the dataset can be read. For simulation environments, use existing frameworks or explain how they can be used.
• Long-term preservation: It must be clear that the dataset will be available for a long time, either by uploading to a data repository or by explaining how the authors themselves will ensure this
• Explicit license: Authors must choose a license, ideally a CC license for datasets, or an open source license for code (e.g. RL environments). An overview of licenses can be found here: https://paperswithcode.com/datasets/license
• Add structured metadata to a dataset's meta-data page using Web standards (like schema.org and DCAT ): This allows it to be discovered and organized by anyone. A guide can be found here: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/dataset . If you use an existing data repository, this is often done automatically.
• Highly recommended: a persistent dereferenceable identifier (e.g. a DOI  minted by a data repository or a prefix on identifiers.org ) for datasets, or a code repository (e.g. GitHub, GitLab,...) for code. If this is not possible or useful, please explain why.
• For benchmarks, the supplementary materials must ensure that all results are easily reproducible. Where possible, use a reproducibility framework such as the ML reproducibility checklist , or otherwise guarantee that all results can be easily reproduced, i.e. all necessary datasets, code, and evaluation procedures must be accessible and documented.
• For papers introducing best practices in creating or curating datasets and benchmarks, the above supplementary materials are not required.
• For papers resubmitted after being retracted from another venue: a brief discussion on the main concerns raised by previous reviewers and how you addressed them. You do not need to share the original reviews.
• For the dual submission and archiving, the policy follows the NeurIPS main track paper guideline .

Use of Large Language Models (LLMs): We welcome authors to use any tool that is suitable for preparing high-quality papers and research. However, we ask authors to keep in mind two important criteria. First, we expect papers to fully describe their methodology, and any tool that is important to that methodology, including the use of LLMs, should be described also. For example, authors should mention tools (including LLMs) that were used for data processing or filtering, visualization, facilitating or running experiments, and proving theorems. It may also be advisable to describe the use of LLMs in implementing the method (if this corresponds to an important, original, or non-standard component of the approach). Second, authors are responsible for the entire content of the paper, including all text and figures, so while authors are welcome to use any tool they wish for writing the paper, they must ensure that all text is correct and original.

REVIEWING AND SELECTION PROCESS

Reviewing will be single-blind, although authors can also submit anonymously if the submission allows that. A datasets and benchmarks program committee will be formed, consisting of experts on machine learning, dataset curation, and ethics. We will ensure diversity in the program committee, both in terms of background as well as technical expertise (e.g., data, ML, data ethics, social science expertise). Each paper will be reviewed by the members of the committee. In select cases where ethical concerns are flagged by reviewers, an ethics review may be performed as well.

Papers will not be publicly visible during the review process. Only accepted papers will become visible afterward. The reviews themselves are also not visible during the review phase but will be published after decisions have been made. Authors can choose to keep the datasets themselves hidden until a later release date, as long as reviewers have access.

The factors that will be considered when evaluating papers include:

• Utility and quality of the submission: Impact, originality, novelty, relevance to the NeurIPS community will all be considered. 
• Reproducibility: All submissions should be accompanied by sufficient information to reproduce the results described i.e. all necessary datasets, code, and evaluation procedures must be accessible and documented. We encourage the use of a reproducibility framework such as the ML reproducibility checklist to guarantee that all results can be easily reproduced. Benchmark submissions in particular should take care to ensure sufficient details are provided to ensure reproducibility. If submissions include code, please refer to the NeurIPS code submission guidelines .  
• Was code provided (e.g. in the supplementary material)? If provided, did you look at the code? Did you consider it useful in guiding your review? If not provided, did you wish code had been available?
• Ethics: Any ethical implications of the work should be addressed. Authors should rely on NeurIPS ethics guidelines as guidance for understanding ethical concerns.  
• Completeness of the relevant documentation: Per NeurIPS ethics guidelines , datasets must be accompanied by documentation communicating the details of the dataset as part of their submissions via structured templates (e.g. TODO). Sufficient detail must be provided on how the data was collected and organized, what kind of information it contains,  ethically and responsibly, and how it will be made available and maintained. 
• Licensing and access: Per NeurIPS ethics guidelines , authors should provide licenses for any datasets released. These should consider the intended use and limitations of the dataset, and develop licenses and terms of use to prevent misuse or inappropriate use.  
• Consent and privacy: Per  NeurIPS ethics guidelines , datasets should minimize the exposure of any personally identifiable information, unless informed consent from those individuals is provided to do so. Any paper that chooses to create a dataset with real data of real people should ask for the explicit consent of participants, or explain why they were unable to do so.
• Ethics and responsible use: Any ethical implications of new datasets should be addressed and guidelines for responsible use should be provided where appropriate. Note that, if your submission includes publicly available datasets (e.g. as part of a larger benchmark), you should also check these datasets for ethical issues. You remain responsible for the ethical implications of including existing datasets or other data sources in your work.
• Legal compliance: For datasets, authors should ensure awareness and compliance with regional legal requirements.

ADVISORY COMMITTEE

The following committee will provide advice on the organization of the track over the coming years: Sergio Escalera, Isabelle Guyon, Neil Lawrence, Dina Machuve, Olga Russakovsky, Joaquin Vanschoren, Serena Yeung.

DATASETS AND BENCHMARKS CHAIRS

Lora Aroyo, Google Francesco Locatello, Institute of Science and Technology Austria Lingjuan Lyu, Sony AI

Contact: [email protected]