Verga Laura, Schwartze Michael, Stapert Sven, Winkens Ieke, Kotz Sonja A
Research Group Comparative Bioacoustics, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
Department of Neuropsychology and Psychopharmacology, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands.
Front Psychol. 2021 Oct 18;12:731898. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.731898. eCollection 2021.
Timing is an essential part of human cognition and of everyday life activities, such as walking or holding a conversation. Previous studies showed that traumatic brain injury (TBI) often affects cognitive functions such as processing speed and time-sensitive abilities, causing long-term sequelae as well as daily impairments. However, the existing evidence on timing capacities in TBI is mostly limited to perception and the processing of isolated intervals. It is therefore open whether the observed deficits extend to motor timing and to continuous dynamic tasks that more closely match daily life activities. The current study set out to answer these questions by assessing audio motor timing abilities and their relationship with cognitive functioning in a group of TBI patients ( = 15) and healthy matched controls. We employed a comprehensive set of tasks aiming at testing timing abilities across perception and production and from single intervals to continuous auditory sequences. In line with previous research, we report functional impairments in TBI patients concerning cognitive processing speed and perceptual timing. Critically, these deficits extended to motor timing: The ability to adjust to tempo changes in an auditory pacing sequence was impaired in TBI patients, and this motor timing deficit covaried with measures of processing speed. These findings confirm previous evidence on perceptual and cognitive timing deficits resulting from TBI and provide first evidence for comparable deficits in motor behavior. This suggests basic co-occurring perceptual and motor timing impairments that may factor into a wide range of daily activities. Our results thus place TBI into the wider range of pathologies with well-documented timing deficits (such as Parkinson's disease) and encourage the search for novel timing-based therapeutic interventions (e.g., employing dynamic and/or musical stimuli) with high transfer potential to everyday life activities.
时间感知是人类认知以及日常生活活动（如行走或交谈）的重要组成部分。先前的研究表明，创伤性脑损伤（TBI）常常会影响诸如处理速度和时间敏感能力等认知功能，导致长期后遗症以及日常功能受损。然而，目前关于TBI患者时间感知能力的现有证据大多仅限于对孤立时间间隔的感知和处理。因此，观察到的缺陷是否会扩展到运动时间感知以及更贴近日常生活活动的连续动态任务，仍不明确。当前的研究旨在通过评估一组TBI患者（n = 15）和健康匹配对照组的听觉运动时间感知能力及其与认知功能的关系来回答这些问题。我们采用了一套全面的任务，旨在测试从感知到产生、从单个时间间隔到连续听觉序列的时间感知能力。与先前的研究一致，我们报告了TBI患者在认知处理速度和感知时间感知方面的功能受损情况。至关重要的是，这些缺陷扩展到了运动时间感知：TBI患者在听觉节奏序列中适应节奏变化的能力受损，并且这种运动时间感知缺陷与处理速度的测量值相关。这些发现证实了先前关于TBI导致感知和认知时间感知缺陷的证据，并为运动行为中类似的缺陷提供了首个证据。这表明存在基本的同时出现的感知和运动时间感知损伤，这可能会影响广泛的日常活动。因此，我们的研究结果将TBI纳入了有充分记录的时间感知缺陷的更广泛病理范围（如帕金森病），并鼓励寻找具有高日常生活活动转化潜力的基于时间感知的新型治疗干预措施（例如，采用动态和/或音乐刺激）。
