The Impact Of Interval Timing On Decision Making

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'.

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.

Understanding temporal integration by the brain is expected to be among the premier topics to unite systems, cellular, computational, and cognitive neuroscience over the next decade. The phenomenon has been studied in humans and animals, yet until now, there has been no publication to successfully bring together the latest information gathered from

At the core of the many debates throughout cognitive science concerning how decisions are made are the processes governing the time course of preference formation and decision. From perceptual choices, such as whether the signal on a radar screen indicates an enemy missile or a spot on a CT scan indicates a tumor, to cognitive value-based decisions, such as selecting an agreeable flatmate or deciding the guilt of a defendant, significant and everyday decisions are dynamic over time. Phenomena such as decoy effects, preference reversals and order effects are still puzzling researchers. For example, in a legal context, jurors receive discrete pieces of evidence in sequence, and must integrate these pieces together to reach a singular verdict. From a standard Bayesian viewpoint the order in which people receive the evidence should not influence their final decision, and yet order effects seem a robust empirical phenomena in many decision contexts. Current research on how decisions unfold, especially in a dynamic environment, is advancing our theoretical understanding of decision making. This Research Topic aims to review and further explore the time course of a decision - from how prior beliefs are formed to how those beliefs are used and updated over time, towards the formation of preferences and choices and post-decision processes and effects. Research literatures encompassing varied approaches to the time-scale of decisions will be brought into scope: a) Speeded decisions (and post-decision processes) that require the accumulation of noisy and possibly non-stationary perceptual evidence (e.g., randomly moving dots stimuli), within a few seconds, with or without temporal uncertainty. b) Temporally-extended, value-based decisions that integrate feedback values (e.g., gambling machines) and internally-generated decision criteria (e.g., when one switches attention, selectively, between the various aspects of several choice alternatives). c) Temporally extended, belief-based decisions that build on the integration of evidence, which interacts with the decision maker's belief system, towards the updating of the beliefs and the formation of judgments and preferences (as in the legal context). Research that emphasizes theoretical concerns (including optimality analysis) and mechanisms underlying the decision process, both neural and cognitive, is presented, as well as research that combines experimental and computational levels of analysis.

Overeating is rapidly becoming a central public health challenge around the world. In this book, we assemble articles from a number of scientists who have made important contributions to this evolving field. This book dives into the basic underlying mechanism for overeating and decision-making vulnerabilities, and provides insights for weight management, treatment of overweight and obesity.

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.

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.