Abstract
The human brain is sensitive to incoming sensory information across multiple time scales. Temporal scales of information represented in the brain generally constrain behavior. Despite reports of the neural correlates of millisecond timing, how the human brain processes sensory stimuli in the sub-second range (≤100 ms) and its behavioral implications are areas of active scientific inquiry. An autism spectrum disorder (ASD) patient showed a tactile discrimination threshold of 6.49 ms on a temporal order judgment (TOJ) task which was approximately 10-fold superior than other ASD and healthy controls (59 and 69 ms, respectively). To investigate the brain regions of this extremely high temporal resolution in the patient, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during TOJ. We observed greater activity notably in the left superior temporal gyrus (STG) and precentral gyrus (PrG) compared to that of controls. Generally, the left superior frontal gyrus (SFG) correlated positively, while the opercular part of right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) correlated negatively, with the correct TOJ rate across all subjects (the patient + 22 healthy controls). We found that the performance was negatively correlated with the strength of neural responses in the right IFG overall in 30 participants (the patient + 22 healthy and 7 ASD controls). Our data reveal superior ability of this particular case of ASD in the millisecond scale for sensory inputs. We highlight several neural correlates of TOJ underlying the facilitation and/or inhibition of temporal resolution in humans.
Highlights
To engage with the external environment, humans process temporal information across a wide range of intervals
The temporal resolution was 58.57 ± 21.32 ms and 68.74 ± 36.45 ms in typically developing (TD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) controls (Figure 1; lower values indicate better temporal resolution), respectively, and there was no significant difference between them [t (20.36) = 0.92; Cohen’s d = 0.35; 95% confidence interval (CI) -33.30, 12.97]
Bayesian standardized difference test (Crawford and Garthwaite, 2007) demonstrated that while T.R.’s temporal resolution (6.49 ms) was significantly greater than TD controls (z = −2.44; p = 0.015; 95% CI 0.00, 0.06), it was marginally greater than ASD controls (z = −1.71; p = 0.062; 95% CI 0.00, 0.16)
Summary
To engage with the external environment, humans process temporal information across a wide range of intervals. High Temporal Sensitivity of an Autism (Davis et al, 2009; Takahashi et al, 2013; Binder, 2015; Miyazaki et al, 2016; Takahashi and Kitazawa, 2017), where participants judge the order of first/last of two successive stimuli with varying stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). Whether these brain areas are involved in resolving extremely fine subsecond interval timing is open to question. Found no significant difference in tactile temporal resolution (40-Hz and 200-Hz vibrotactile stimuli) between ASD and TD, individual differences of temporal resolution were associated with the severity of sensory hyper-responsivity (Ide et al, 2019)
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