Neural correlates of time distortion in a preaction period

An intention to move distorts the perception of time. For example, a visual stimulus presented during the preparation of manual movements is perceived longer than actual. Although neural mechanisms underlying this action-induced time distortion have been unclear, here we propose a new model in which the distortion is caused by a sensory-motor interaction mediated by alpha rhythm. It is generally known that viewing a stimulus induces a reduction in amplitude of occipital 10-Hz wave ("alpha-blocking"). Preparing manual movements are also known to reduce alpha power in the motor cortex ("mu-suppression"). When human participants prepared movements while viewing a stimulus, we found that those two types of classical alpha suppression interacted in the third (time-processing) region in the brain, inducing a prominent decrease in alpha power in the supplementary motor cortex (SMA). Interestingly, this alpha suppression in the SMA occurred in an asymmetric manner (such that troughs of alpha rhythm was more strongly suppressed than peaks), which can produce a gradual increase (slow shift of baseline) in neural activity. Since the neural processing in the SMA encodes a subjective time length for a sensory event, the increased activity in this region (by the asymmetric alpha suppression) would cause an overestimation of elapsed time, resulting in the action-induced time distortion. Those results showed a unique role of alpha wave enabling communications across distant (visual, motor, and time-processing) regions in the brain and further suggested a new type of sensory-motor interaction based on neural desynchronization (rather than synchronization).