The Journal of Neurophysiology Vol. 86 No. 6 December 2001, pp. 2754-2760
Copyright ©2001 by the American Physiological Society

Quantitative Modeling of Perception and Production of Time Intervals

 ¹Section of Neurobiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8001;  ²Institute of Advanced Diagnostic Methodologies, National Research Council, 90146 Palermo;  ³Department of Psychology, Palermo University, 90128 Palermo; and  ⁴Oasi Institute for Research on Mental Retardation and Brain Aging (IRCCS), 94018 Troina, Italy

Migliore, M., L. Messineo, M. Cardaci, and G. F. Ayala. Quantitative Modeling of Perception and Production of Time Intervals. J. Neurophysiol. 86: 2754-2760, 2001. The accurate perception/production of durations in the seconds and minutes range is important in a number of everyday activities, but the lack of direct experimental evidence on the neural circuits that could be involved has precluded the detailed elucidation of the underlying physiological mechanisms. We show, using a basic biophysical model of a timekeeping system and experimental data on time intervals produced or estimated under different conditions, that experimental values, variability, and distributions can be quantitatively explained in terms of a background synaptic activity such as that generated by attention. The model provides a plausible neural substrate for encoding time intervals, and the findings suggest how it may interplay at the single neuron level with the attentional system, to elaborate a subjective representation of the elapsing time.