Abstract
Intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs) contain photoreceptors that are especially sensitive to blue light. Nevertheless, how blue light and ipRGCs affect time perception remains unsolved. We used the oddball paradigm and manipulated the background light to examine whether and how blue light and ipRGCs affect perceived duration. In the oddball paradigm, participants were asked to judge the duration of the target (oddball), compared to that of the standard, with a two alternative-forced-choice procedure. When the background light was controlled to be either blue or red in Experiment 1, results showed that blue light led to longer subjective duration compared to red light. Experiment 2 further clarified the contribution of the ipRGCs. A set of multi-primary projector system that could manipulate the ipRGC stimulation were used, while the color and luminance of the background lights were kept constant throughout. Results showed that increased stimulation of ipRGCs under metameric background expanded subjective time. These results suggest that ipRGC stimulation increases arousal/attention so as to expand subjective duration.
Highlights
In this study, we examined the role of a population of intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells on observers’ duration judgment
To clarify the role of Intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs) in affecting perceived duration, in the experiment, we created a pair of lights with the same color and luminance and manipulated different ipRGC stimulations to tease apart the effect of color and luminance[30,31]
To reveal the role of ipRGCs on perceived duration and to resolve the controversy about the effect of blue light on time perception, we used an oddball paradigm as the task for time perception and manipulated different background conditions when judging the duration of the oddball
Summary
We examined the role of a population of intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs) on observers’ duration judgment. The studies that investigated time perception under blue light have rendered inconsistent results These inconsistent results may result from different amount of ipRGC stimulation (i.e., in different color lights used), tasks (i.e., time production), or target time intervals (i.e., sub- or supra-second). Yasuda, Shimomura, and Iwanaga[12] used a production task to measure supra-second time interval, manipulating the background light as blue or red. Their results showed no effect between the two background conditions, except that time perception was lengthened at 180 s duration under blue light compared to that under red light. Shibasaki and Masataka[13] used a time comparison task under blue and red light, with the www.nature.com/scientificreports/
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