Subjective Duration as a Signature of Coding Efficiency: Emerging Links Among Stimulus Repetition, Predictive Coding, and Cortical GABA Levels

Abstract

Immediate repetition of a stimulus reduces its apparent duration relative to a novel item. Recent work indicates that this may reflect suppressed cortical responses to repeated stimuli, arising from neural adaptation and/or the predictive coding of expected stimuli. This article summarizes recent behavioral and neurobiological studies linking perceived time to the magnitude of cortical responses, including work suggesting that variations in GABA-mediated cortical inhibition may underlie some of the individual differences in time perception. We suggest that the firing of cortical neurons can be modified using simple recurrent networks with time-dependent processes that are modulated by GABA levels. These local networks feed into a core-timing network used to integrate across stimulus inputs/modalities, thereby allowing for the coordination of multiple duration ranges and effector systems.