Time in Action · Shaping time through action learning
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-09-01 → 2023-12-31
- EU contribution
- €171,473
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
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Results in brief
Shaping time through action learning
Timing is deeply rooted in human cognition and behaviour, providing the basis for our ability of comprehending speech, playing sports, and appreciating music. Despite lack of dedicated sensory and neural systems for time, people exhibit extraordinarily precise time estimation. Our sense of time is believed to leverage motor systems endowed with high temporal precision required for action control. This relationship is reflected in a large body of behavioural studies showing that time estimation is significantly distorted by action. However, this literature is represented by experimental approaches that overlook critical aspects of motor function. Actions are goal driven and control is gradually refined through learning, yet our understanding of how the motor system instantiates time stems from paradigms with ill-defined behavioural goals, and where timing operation is captured through static snapshots of average performance, not accounting for dynamic aspects of action learning, and the way these processes gradually shape timing. This fundamental gap in the literature has motivated this Marie Curie IF project (Time in Action), aimed at understanding how timing is shaped in the visual domain during action planning, and critically how this relationship is modulated by goal driven motor control & motor learning processes. I have set up 3 experiments to meet these aims, combining perceptual judgements of duration, hand tracking and electroencephalographic measurements of brain activity (EEG), to understand how the brain constructs an understanding of time through action control, and what neural mechanisms underlie this process. Time in Action provides a paradigm shift in this literature by accounting for goal-driven action learning mechanisms that are central the motor system’s operation, and the way these processes dynamically shape our sense of time.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Timing permeates our daily experience. We extract temporal regularities to predict events, such as traffic light behaviour. We narrow down cause-effect relationships based on temporal proximity of events. Everyday behaviours, such as shaking hands or speaking, are possible because of accurate timing. Despite its importance, timing is an elusive concept. We lack a sensing organ for time (in the same way as we have eyes for detecting light), and there are no brain areas uniquely involved in its processing (in the same way as we have visual cortices for vision). Given these constraints, how does time perception arise in the brain? Converging evidence suggests a central role of action in enabling time perception. Developmental studies suggest that timing is ‘acquired’ as children learn to interact with the environment. Brain research indeed shows a considerable action/timing overlap, as timing computations are embedded in action control brain function. Indeed, at its core, successful behaviour is all about timing: accurate timing is what separates successful actions such as shifting gears, from unsuccessful ones such as bumping into a car in front of us. Thus, timing might emerge from our ability of learning goal-directed behaviour. We propose that the key to the time perception puzzle lies in formalizing this statement, by directly evaluating time perception in the context of goal-directed action learning. We will causally establish how learning of goal-directed action features shapes our perception and neural processing of time. This will be carried out across experiments requiring adults to simultaneously learn goal-directed actions and estimate the duration of visual stimuli, while recording electroencephalographic (EEG) measures of brain activity. This project will spearhead a new cross-disciplinary approach merging timing and motor learning paradigms, with a significant impact on the way we think about and methodologically approach the study of time.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- SCUOLA INTERNAZIONALE SUPERIORE DI STUDI AVANZATI DI TRIESTE · TriesteCoordinatorItaly
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union