Time dilates after spontaneous blinking

Accumulating evidence from pharmacology, neuroimaging, and genetics indicates that striatal dopamine influences time perception [1-5]. Despite these converging results, it is not known whether endogenous variations in dopamine underlie transient fluctuations in our perception of time. Here, we exploited the finding that striatal dopamine release is associated with an increase in spontaneous eye blink rate [6-8] to examine the relationship between intra-individual fluctuations in dopamine and interval timing. In two studies, participants overestimated visual subsecond and suprasecond and auditory subsecond intervals if they had blinked on the previous trial. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that transient fluctuations in striatal dopamine contribute to intra-individual variability in time perception.