Ongoing behavior predicts perceptual report of interval duration.

ABSTRACT: The ability to estimate the passage of time is essential for adaptive behavior in complex environments. Yet, it is not known how the brain encodes time over the durations necessary to explain animal behavior. Under temporally structured reinforcement schedules, animals tend to develop temporally structured behavior, and interval timing has been suggested to be accomplished by learning sequences of behavioral states. If this is true, trial to trial fluctuations in behavioral sequences should be predictive of fluctuations in time estimation. We trained rodents in an duration categorization task while continuously monitoring their behavior with a high speed camera. Animals developed highly reproducible behavioral sequences during the interval being timed. Moreover, those sequences were often

SUBMITTER: Gouvea TS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3949350 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature