time

THURSDAY, 28 January

How the brain tells time

 (organized by D. Bueti, Lausanne, Switzerland, G.M. Cicchini, Pisa, Italy)

The quest of how the brain computes and perceives the passage of time has always been both fascinating and elusive. The first formal proposal of how this can happen has been formulated in the sixties of last century assuming a centralized mechanism which accumulates pulses emitted at a regular rate by a “pacemaker”. Despite this proposal has been fruitful in generating much research, it is now becoming clear that estimating temporal properties of events is an important biological function which is not served by a single structure but by multiple mechanism which often re-employ other structures involved in sensory processing and motor planning. In this symposium we will have three pivotal examples of this new approach to time perception.

15.00  GUIDO MARCO CICCHINI (Pisa, Italy)

 Introduction

15.15  DEAN BUONOMANO (Los Angeles, USA)

 Telling time with the neural dynamics

15.50 Floor discussion

16.00  MATHEW E. DIAMOND (Trieste, Italy)

 Unified framework for perception of stimulus intensity and perception of stimulus duration in humans and rats

16.40  Floor discussion

16.50  Coffee break 

17.10  DOMENICA BUETI (Lausanne, Switzerland)

  The neural representation of time in the human brain.

17.50  Floor discussion

18.00  General discussion

Dean Buonomano will show that even simple brain circuits can possess a wide repertoire of dynamics sufficient to encode time intervals. 

Mathew Diamond will show how time is processed by the same neurons encoding basic tactile features. 

Domenica Bueti will show that time perception is enabled by a rich network involving both sensory and motor areas. 

All this evidence reinforces the idea that the brain computes temporal information at several levels in order to enrich each sensation and each motor act with the sense of time.

References

Bueti D et al. Neuron (2012) 75:725-737.

Buonomano DV, Maass W. Nat Rev Neurosci (2009) 10:113-125.

Cicchini GM et al. J Neurosci (2012) 32:1056-1060.

Morrone MC et al. NatNeurosci (2005) 8:950-954.

Treisman M Psychol Monogr (1963) 77:1-31.