Morrow Audrey, Wilson Montana, Geller-Montague Michaela, Soldano Sara, Hajidamji Sabah, Samaha Jason
University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064.
University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143.
bioRxiv. 2025 May 28:2024.12.16.628734. doi: 10.1101/2024.12.16.628734.
A growing body of research links individual differences in the alpha-band frequency to temporal aspects of perception. However, whether the human alpha rhythm is a correlate of time perception itself has remained controversial. This study combined EEG with multiple duration perception tasks to evaluate whether individual alpha frequency (IAF) is associated with sensitivity or bias in judging visual durations across a range of peri-second durations (spanning 100-1200ms). In a temporal estimation task, participants (n = 55; 38 female, 13 male, 4 non-binary) reported the duration of a single stimulus between 300-1200ms. In a temporal discrimination task, participants reported which of two stimuli was longer: a standard (100, 600, or 1200ms) or comparison (50-150% of the standard). Stimuli also varied in whether their luminance was static or dynamically varying over time. We found that IAF was significantly related to the variance of duration estimates, a precision measure, but not average duration estimates, a bias measure. Further supporting this relationship, psychometric function slopes obtained from the independent duration discrimination tasks were positively correlated with IAF, particularly for the static stimulus conditions. These individual differences effects held when controlling for participant age. We also explored trial-level variability in alpha frequency and found it was predictive of shifts in the point of subjective equality (PSE) during discrimination of very short (100ms). Taken together, these results suggest that IAF plays a role in shaping individual differences in the sensitivity of time perception and that spontaneous variations around one's IAF can lead to a bias in temporal representations.
越来越多的研究将阿尔法波段频率的个体差异与感知的时间维度联系起来。然而，人类阿尔法节律是否是时间感知本身的相关因素仍存在争议。本研究将脑电图（EEG）与多种持续时间感知任务相结合，以评估个体阿尔法频率（IAF）是否与在一系列接近一秒的持续时间（跨度为100 - 1200毫秒）内判断视觉持续时间的敏感性或偏差相关。在一个时间估计任务中，参与者（n = 55；38名女性，13名男性，4名非二元性别）报告单个持续时间在300 - 1200毫秒之间的刺激的时长。在一个时间辨别任务中，参与者报告两个刺激中哪个更长：一个标准刺激（100、600或1200毫秒）或比较刺激（标准刺激的50 - 150%）。刺激的亮度是静态的还是随时间动态变化的也有所不同。我们发现IAF与持续时间估计的方差（一种精确性度量）显著相关，但与平均持续时间估计（一种偏差度量）无关。从独立的持续时间辨别任务中获得的心理测量函数斜率与IAF呈正相关，进一步支持了这种关系，特别是在静态刺激条件下。在控制参与者年龄后，这些个体差异效应依然存在。我们还探讨了阿尔法频率在试验水平上的变异性，发现它可以预测在辨别非常短的刺激（100毫秒）时主观相等点（PSE）的变化。综上所述，这些结果表明IAF在塑造时间感知敏感性的个体差异中起作用，并且围绕个体IAF的自发变化会导致时间表征中的偏差。
