Dr. Marc Wittmann

时间： 2010-05-28 12:30 - 14:30

地点： 哲学楼 103房间

The core neural substrates and the processes accounting for the experience of time are still unknown, as witnessed by the great diversity of psychological and neurophysiological models of ‘time perception’. In this talk some of the variation across the proposed models will be explained. Different cognitive processes, which are distributed over the brain, are involved in the estimation of duration on different time scales ranging from the milliseconds to the multiple seconds range. They are not necessarily part of a core time-keeping system but, nevertheless, influence our experience of time. As a consequence, patients with dysfunctions in various areas of the brain can be impaired in temporal processing. Moreover, neuroimaging studies show a multitude of areas active during time perception tasks. Recent empirical findings on the relationship between affective processes and subjective time, together with recent conceptualizations of self- and body processes are reviewed that have led to the assumption that time perception entails emotional and interoceptive (within the body) states. I will present new fMRI evidence of neurophysiological activity in circumscribed areas of the human brain involved in the encoding of duration. Time-activity curves of neural activation during an fMRI duration reproduction task show that activity within bilateral posterior insula represents duration of multiple seconds. Given the close connection between the posterior insula and ascending body signals, it is suggested that the integration of ascending interoceptive signals, reflecting the totality of body states and their physiological changes, is at the basis of perception of duration and hence of experience of time.

2010-05-28

2010-05-28