Analysis of Genetic and Non-Genetic Factors Influencing Timing and Time Perception.

Virginie Van Wassenhove,Alex J Bartholomew,Elizabeth T Cirulli,Warren H Meck

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0143873

Abstract

Performance on different psychophysical tasks measuring the sense of time indicates a large amount of individual variation in the accuracy and precision of timing in the hundredths of milliseconds-to-minutes range. Quantifying factors with an influence on timing is essential to isolating a biological (genetic) contribution to the perception and estimation of time. In the largest timing study to date, 647 participants completed a duration-discrimination task in the sub-second range and a time-production task in the supra-second range. We confirm the stability of a participant’s time sense across multiple sessions and substantiate a modest sex difference on time production. Moreover, we demonstrate a strong correlation between performance on a standardized cognitive battery and performance in both duration-discrimination and time-production tasks; we further show that performance is uncorrelated with age after controlling for general intelligence. Additionally, we find an effect of ethnicity on time sense, with African Americans and possibly Hispanics in our cohort differing in accuracy and precision from other ethnic groups. Finally, a preliminary genome-wide association and exome chip study was performed on 148 of the participants, ruling out the possibility for a single common variant or groups of low-frequency coding variants within a single gene to explain more than ~18% of the variation in the sense of time.

Highlights

The perception and estimation of time, both on a behavioral and neuroanatomical level, remains a heavily researched and theorized topic [1]
We have assessed a large population of healthy volunteers for their performance on time production and duration discrimination tasks
Performance was analyzed in the context of numerous other variables thought to influence timing and time perception in the seconds-to-minutes range, including age, sex, depression, education, and cognitive performance

Summary

Introduction

The perception and estimation of time, both on a behavioral and neuroanatomical level, remains a heavily researched and theorized topic [1]. Attentional time-sharing constructs can be used to extend these models by emphasizing the effect of resource allocation on pulse accumulation, in addition to the biological factors inherent to the pacemaker-counter model [10,11,12] While most of these models were developed for tasks spanning multiple second intervals, they are being extended into shorter time ranges [8, 13,14,15]. Understanding and characterizing these factors is essential to isolating biological implications, such as the role of genetics, in time perception [25] It should be noted, that the current study uses a duration discrimination procedure in the sub-second range and a temporal production procedure in the supra-seconds range, thereby suggesting caution when making comparisons of accuracy and precision across these tasks. We approach the breadth of individual variation from a genetic perspective with a GWAS and exome chip study, with sub-analyses focused on previously identified candidate genes [43, 46, 47]

Participants and Ethics

Results

Discussion