Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA.
Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, Freiburg, Germany.
Psychophysiology. 2023 Aug;60(8):e14270. doi: 10.1111/psyp.14270. Epub 2023 Mar 2.
The role of the heart in the experience of time has been long theorized but empirical evidence is scarce. Here, we examined the interaction between fine-grained cardiac dynamics and the momentary experience of subsecond intervals. Participants performed a temporal bisection task for brief tones (80-188 ms) synchronized with the heart. We developed a cardiac Drift-Diffusion Model (cDDM) that embedded contemporaneous heart rate dynamics into the temporal decision model. Results revealed the existence of temporal wrinkles-dilation or contraction of short intervals-in synchrony with cardiac dynamics. A lower prestimulus heart rate was associated with an initial bias in encoding the millisecond-level stimulus duration as longer, consistent with facilitation of sensory intake. Concurrently, a higher prestimulus heart rate aided more consistent and faster temporal judgments through more efficient evidence accumulation. Additionally, a higher speed of poststimulus cardiac deceleration, a bodily marker of attention, was associated with a greater accumulation of sensory temporal evidence in the cDDM. These findings suggest a unique role of cardiac dynamics in the momentary experience of time. Our cDDM framework opens a new methodological avenue for investigating the role of the heart in time perception and perceptual judgment.
心脏在时间体验中的作用早已被理论化，但实证证据却很少。在这里，我们研究了精细的心脏动力学与亚秒间隔的瞬间体验之间的相互作用。参与者在与心脏同步的短暂音调（80-188ms）上执行时间二分任务。我们开发了一种心脏漂移扩散模型（cDDM），将同时的心率动态嵌入到时间决策模型中。结果表明存在时间皱纹——短间隔的扩张或收缩——与心脏动力学同步。较低的预刺激心率与将毫秒级刺激持续时间初始编码为更长的初始偏差有关，这与感觉摄入的促进一致。同时，较高的预刺激心率通过更有效的证据积累，有助于更一致和更快的时间判断。此外，作为注意力的身体标志物，刺激后心脏减速的速度较高与在 cDDM 中积累更多的感官时间证据有关。这些发现表明心脏动力学在时间体验中的独特作用。我们的 cDDM 框架为研究心脏在时间感知和感知判断中的作用开辟了一条新的方法途径。
