The sleep-wake circuit plays a role in temporal distortions

Normally individuals give a fairly accurate subjective estimate of short seconds-to-minutes time interval durations. However, in some circumstances such as a high fever, sudden fear, and old age, temporal distortions can occur so that a conscious individual experiences the passage of subjective time that differs substantially from the actual measured time. Behaviors associated with these temporal distortions and with time perception in general are consistent with the existence of a neural clock circuit in the brain for estimating the passage of short time intervals, but experimental studies to date have generally been limited in demonstrating such a neural circuit. Here we propose that, unexpectedly, actions of the well-known sleep-wake neural circuit are ultimately responsible for many of these known temporal distortions given two basic hypotheses about the underlying electromagnetic nature of the brain. We review this concept, including the theoretical existence of an imaginary-valued pacemaker signal that moves through time along with the brain. We describe the details of this sleep-wake circuit hypothesis, the two main existing theoretical ideas that underlie it, its consistency with currently proposed specific mechanisms of temporal distortions, and how the sleep-wake circuit can serve as a final common route for these specific mechanisms. Importantly, we also show that the sleep-wake circuit hypothesis is readily testable - that it can be falsified using existing experimental methods.