Interval timing and time-based decision making.
Résumé
The importance of time perception and timed performance is revealed in everyday activities from the sleep–wake cycle to verbal communication, playing, and appreciating music, the exquisite temporal control of both voluntary and involuntary behavior, and choice. 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, the oscillatory properties of neural circuits can be shown to influence the acquisition of conditioned responding and the timing of motor responses. This Research Topic on “Interval Timing and Time-Based Decision Making” emerged from a symposium sponsored by the European COST-Action on Time In MEntaL activity: theoretical, behavioral, bioimaging, and clinical perspectives (TIMELY) that was a satellite of the European Brain and Behaviour Society meeting held in Seville, Spain (September 9, 2011). The focus of that TIMELY symposium was on “Neurobiology of Time Perception: From Normality to Dysfunction” and was organized by Valérie Doyère, Argiro Vatakis, and Elzbieta Szelag.