Mita Akihisa, Mushiake Hajime, Shima Keisetsu, Matsuzaka Yoshiya, Tanji Jun
Department of Physiology, Tohoku University School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan.
Nat Neurosci. 2009 Apr;12(4):502-7. doi: 10.1038/nn.2272. Epub 2009 Mar 1.
Interval timing is an essential guiding force of behavior. Previous reports have implicated the prefrontal and parietal cortex as being involved in time perception and in temporal decision making. We found that neurons in the medial motor areas, in particular the presupplementary motor area, participate in interval timing in the range of seconds. Monkeys were trained to perform an interval-generation task that required them to determine waiting periods of three different durations. Neuronal activity contributed to the process of retrieving time instructions from visual cues, signaled the initiation of action in a time-selective manner, and developed activity to represent the passage of time. These results specify how medial motor areas take part in initiating actions on the basis of self-generated time estimates.
间隔计时是行为的一种重要引导力量。先前的报告表明前额叶和顶叶皮质参与时间感知和时间决策。我们发现内侧运动区的神经元，特别是辅助运动区，参与了秒级范围内的间隔计时。猴子被训练执行一项间隔生成任务，要求它们确定三种不同持续时间的等待期。神经元活动有助于从视觉线索中检索时间指令的过程，以时间选择性的方式发出动作开始的信号，并产生活动来表示时间的流逝。这些结果明确了内侧运动区如何基于自我生成的时间估计参与启动动作。
