Scientific Research

Motor and Action Planning Enhance How We Make Decisions About Time Duration

By Farah Bader

Feb 06, 2020

Movement trajectories are idiosyncratic between subjects, yet consistent within subject. Layout of the start position (green filled circle), and short (blue filled circle) and long targets (red filled circle) is the same as in Figure 1C. Color-coding of traces reflects hand movement through the progression of the given trial (black, warm-up period; green, during the tone duration; red, after the tone until the decision). Top row, Trajectory data for 2000 ms trials for three example subjects from Experiment 1 (free-movement). Classification of a short duration is the left target; a long classification is the right target. Each subject employed a separate strategy, with one subject (S4) moving in a circular pattern between short and long locations, another (S1) rotating in a leftward arc before moving in between both targets, and a third (S2) moving in an up–down fashion before shifting from the middle to a target location. Bottom row, Three example subjects for 2000 ms trials from Experiment 2 (hold). Changes-of-mind are evident, including a shift from long to short (S1), short to long (S3), and both (S2).

Material below summarizes the article Movement Improves the Quality of Temporal Perception and Decision-Making, published on August 8, 2019, in eNeuro and authored by Martin Wiener, Weiwei Zhou, Farah Bader, and Wilsaan M. Joiner.

Highlights

Physical movements during encoding of auditory stimuli improve the final determination of time duration.

Time perception is an integral component of motor planning and adaptation.

Timing is directly computed in the motor system.

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About the Contributor

Farah Bader

Farah Bader is a fourth-year PhD student in the interdisciplinary program in neuroscience at George Mason University. She is interested in the alterations in timing perception in traumatic brain injury victims compared to those in healthy human subjects, as well as electrophysiological indices of time perception and learning.

Motor and Action Planning Enhance How We Make Decisions About Time Duration

Access to the full article is available to SfN members.

About the Contributor

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