Interval Timing And Time Based Decision Making

The perception of time is crucial for everyday activities from the sleep–wake cycle to playing and appreciating music, verbal communication, to the determination of the value of a particular behavior. With regard to the last point, making decisions is heavily influenced by the duration of the various options, the duration of the expected delays for receiving the options, and the time constraints for making a choice. Recent advances suggest that the brain represents time in a distributed manner and reflects time as a result of temporal changes in network states and/or by the coincidence detection of the phase of different neural populations. Moreover, intrinsic oscillatory properties of neural circuits could determine timed motor responses. This Research Topic, partly an emergence of a Satellite EBBS meeting sponsored by the COST-Action TIMELY, will discuss how time in the physical world is reconstructed, distorted and modified in brain networks by emotion, learning and neuropathology. This Research Topic on Timing contains up-to-date reviews regarding the relationship between time and decision-making with respect to the underlying psychological and physiological mechanisms responsible for anticipation and evaluation processes.

The cognitive process of timing intervals of different durations is a complex mechanism, which is permanently solved by various species. It is an underlying process of many cognitive functions, which are crucial for survival. The timing process, from sensory recognition to the point of making a decision whether or how to react, is closely interrelated with attentional and inhibitory functions. Many timing functions co-measure other crucial cognitive functions depending on the temporal domain they cover. For example, attention to time is also measured in different timing tasks, furthermore time reproduction relies on working memory function and the ability to delay a response. In this book I manly focused on time estimation and time reproduction tasks in the domain of seconds. All these cognitive functions are related to frontal brain regions. I demonstrate that the avian NCL is capable of all these functions just like the mammalian PFC. The main question of this thesis is: 'what exactly is the role of the underlying process - interval timing - on higher cognitive functions, how is it computed in the NCL and what is the role of dopamine and acetylcholine'.

Timing and Time Perception: Procedures, Measures, and Applications is a one-of-a-kind, collective effort to present the most utilized and known methods on timing and time perception. Specifically, it covers methods and analysis on circadian timing, synchrony perception, reaction/response time, time estimation, and alternative methods for clinical/developmental research. The book includes experimental protocols, programming code, and sample results and the content ranges from very introductory to more advanced so as to cover the needs of both junior and senior researchers. We hope that this will be the first step in future efforts to document experimental methods and analysis both in a theoretical and in a practical manner. Contributors are: Patricia V. Agostino, Rocío Alcalá-Quintana, Fuat Balcı, Karin Bausenhart, Richard Block, Ivana L. Bussi, Carlos S. Caldart, Mariagrazia Capizzi, Xiaoqin Chen, Ángel Correa, Massimiliano Di Luca, Céline Z. Duval, Mark T. Elliott, Dagmar Fraser, David Freestone, Miguel A. García-Pérez, Anne Giersch, Simon Grondin, Nori Jacoby, Florian Klapproth, Franziska Kopp, Maria Kostaki, Laurence Lalanne, Giovanna Mioni, Trevor B. Penney, Patrick E. Poncelet, Patrick Simen, Ryan Stables, Rolf Ulrich, Argiro Vatakis, Dominic Ward, Alan M. Wing, Kieran Yarrow, and Dan Zakay.

Researchers working in many fields of psychology and neuroscience are interested in the temporal structure of experience, as well as the experience of time, at scales of a few milliseconds up to a few seconds as well as days, months, years, and beyond. This Research Topic supposes that broadly speaking, the field of "time psychology" can be organized by distinguishing between "perceptual" and "conceptual" time-scales. Dealing with conceptual time: "mental time travel," also called mental simulation, self-projection, episodic-semantic memory, prospection/foresight, allows humans (and perhaps other animals) to imagine and plan events and experiences in their personal futures, based in large part on memories of their personal pasts, as well as general knowledge. Moreover, contents of human language and thought are fundamentally organized by a temporal dimension, enmeshed with it so thoroughly that it is usually expressible only through spatial metaphors. But what might such notions have to do with experienced durations of events lasting milliseconds up to a few seconds, during the so-called "present moment" of perception-action cycle time? This Research Topic is organized around the general premise that, by considering how mental time travel might "scale down" to time perception (and vice-versa, no less), progress and integrative synthesis within- and across- scientific domains might be facilitated. Bipolar configurations of future- and past-orientations of the self may be repeated in parallel across conceptual and perceptual time-scales, subsumed by a general "Janus-like" feedforward-feedback system for goal-pursuit. As an example, it is notable that the duality of "prospection" and semantic-episodic memory operating at conceptual time-scales has an analogue in perception-action cycle time, namely the interplay of anticipatory attention and working memory. Authors from all areas of psychology and neuroscience are encouraged to submit articles of any format accepted by the journal (Original Research, Methods, Hypothesis & Theory, Reviews, etc.), which might speak to questions about time and temporal phenomena at long and/or short time-scales.

Using a concise question and answer format, The Perception of Time: Your Questions Answered examines basic temporal processes and the ways in which our perception of time can be altered. Divided into three parts, the book provides a contemporary overview of the study of the temporal mind. It begins by introducing the fundamental processes of time perception; how it can be measured, how it can be hindered, and to what extent it can be enhanced. It proceeds to explain how cognitive and psychological disorders, such as schizophrenia, ADHD, and anxiety can be linked to temporal dysfunction, and answers common questions that face us all: why does time seem to go faster as we age? How do our emotions affect our perception of time? How does our relationship with time differ from others? Providing comprehensive answers to the most pertinent questions of time perception, this book is an ideal companion for advanced students and researchers interested in the psychology of time.

I. Learning & Memory: Elizabeth Phelps & Lila Davachi (Volume Editors) Topics covered include working memory; fear learning; education and memory; memory and future imagining; sleep and memory; emotion and memory; motivation and memory; inhibition in memory; attention and memory; aging and memory; autobiographical memory; eyewitness memory; and category learning.

The Handbook of Behavioral Genetics and Phenotyping represents an integrative approach to neurobehavioural genetics; worldwide experts in their field will review all chapters. Advanced overviews of neurobehavioural characteristics will add immense value to the investigation of animal mutants and provide unique information about the genetics and behavioural understanding of animal models, under both normal and pathological conditions. Cross-species comparisons of neurobehavioural phenotypes will pave the way for an evolutionary understanding of behaviour. Moreover, while biological sciences are progressing towards a holistic approach to investigate the complexity of organisms (i.e., “systems biology” approach), an integrated analysis of behavioural phenotyping is still lacking. The Handbook of Behavioral Genetics and Phenotyping strengthens the cross-talk within disciplines that investigate the fundamental basis of behaviour and genetics. This will be the first volume in which traditionally distant fields including genomics, behaviour, electrophysiology, neuroeconomics, and computational neuroscience, among others, are evaluated together and simultaneously accounted for during discussions of future perspectives.

The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Science emphasizes the research and theory most central to modern cognitive science: computational theories of complex human cognition. Additional facets of cognitive science are discussed in the handbook's introductory chapter.