Studying temporal information processing

Abstract

Que´bec is the only one of ten provinces in Canada to bepredominantly French. Laval University is located in thesecond largest city of this province, Que´bec city. This cityis more than 400 years old, which is quite old for a NorthAmerican city. About half a million people live in Que´bec,a city that is offering a variety of fine cultural activities.Laval University offers education in French and hosts morethan 44,000 students and 1,100 professors.My Perception and Neurosciences Laboratory is locat-ed in the middle of the Laval campus in a building whereare located most research laboratories and administrativeactivities of the School of Psychology. This laboratory,which receives the financial support from the NaturalSciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada andfrom the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Councilof Canada, is indeed dedicated to the understanding ofvarious aspects related to timing and psychological time(http://darwin.psy.ulaval.ca/~perception/). In order to findthe properties of what is assumed to be an internal clockresponsible for the processing of temporal information, apsychophysical approach was emphasized in the lab overthe past 25 years, with one critical question being whetheror not Weber’s law applies for time. This internal clock isdescribed in many contemporary models as a pacemaker-counter device, with the accumulation of pulses emitted bya pacemaker providing the information about duration[1–3].It is important to study time because much behavioursuch as speech and music production requires temporaladjustments. Determining whether there is a central mech-anism for serving these adjustments, and the exact natureand properties of such a mechanism, is a huge scientificchallenge. Indeed, some researchers rather propose thateach sensory mode has its own way of processing time.Whatever the exact nature of the process responsible fortiming and timekeeping activities, one has to explain howthe mechanism interacts with the regularities of events metin the environment, and what range of duration it covers.The time perception field was recently made even moreexciting as it also benefited from the technological develop-ments in neuroscience, opening up new research avenues.Theresearchactivitiesinmylaboratoryincludeprojectsconducted within and across sensory modes. Becauseaudition is the most efficient modality for processingtemporal information,recent investigationswere completedto understand different aspects of auditory temporalprocessing, in speech or with musician participants. Theresearch projects also include experiments on the influenceof space on time judgments, rhythm, the role of attentionand memory on duration estimation and the learning andcross-modal transfer of temporal information. According topreferences of Ph. D. students, some projects are conductedon the effects of emotions, playing video games or usingthe internet on temporal distortions; and on the impact ofvariousdisordersorpathologies(schizophrenia,depression,autism, dyslexia) on temporal processing or psychologicaltime. Moreover, the laboratory now offers the possibility toconduct electroencephalographic investigations, and it ispossible to link scientific collaborations with members ofresearch centres inQue´bec City forconducting experimentsinvolving neurostimulations or fMRI.REFERENCES