Emergent motor timing enhances time perception

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Motor Control
• Perception

Background:

• Precise timing is crucial for various human behaviors, including motor skills and environmental navigation.
• Understanding the relationship between motor learning and temporal perception is key to sensorimotor integration.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how stable temporal patterns emerging during goal-directed movements affect timing acuity in perceptual tasks.
• To explore the potential for a shared neural representation of time across motor action and perceptual discrimination.

Main Methods:

• Participants engaged in a self-paced throwing task over four days to implicitly develop motor timing.
• Motor timing was assessed via consistent ball release times.
• Perceptual discrimination of temporal intervals was tested before and after motor training.

Main Results:

• Practice in the throwing task led to stable motor timing.
• This emergent motor timing selectively improved sensitivity to matching temporal intervals in a perceptual task.
• The observed enhancement in timing acuity persisted for weeks and was distinct from general perceptual learning.

Conclusions:

• Experience-based motor learning can establish durable motor-perceptual linkages.
• Stable temporal patterns in movement may serve as an emergent timing primitive shared by action and perception.
• Findings have implications for understanding sensorimotor integration and informing rehabilitation strategies.