The effect of individual visual sensitivity on time perception
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | SCIENTIFIC REPORTS |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| web | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-88778-8#Abs1 |
| Doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-88778-8 |
| Keywords | time perception; visual sensitivity; cortical hyperexcitability; temporal bisection task; virtual reality |
| Description | The human mind, trying to perceive events coherently, creates the illusion of continuous time passage. Empirical evidence suggests distortions in subjectively perceived time flow associated with well-studied neural responses to sensory stimuli. This study aimed to investigate whether visually uncomfortable patterns, causing exceptionally strong brain activation, affect short time estimates and whether these estimates vary based on the overall reported sensory sensitivity and cortical excitability of individuals. Two experiments in virtual reality testing our assumptions at different levels of complexity of timed stimuli provided initial insight into the studied processes in highly controlled and realistic conditions. Data analysis results did not support our hypotheses, but showed that subjectively most visually uncomfortable simple patterns, i.e., achromatic gratings, cause more variable temporal judgments. Supposedly, this inaccuracy depends on the currently perceived visual comfort and thus the current visual system sensitivity, which cannot be satisfactorily derived from trait-based measures. The exploration of the effect of complex stimuli, i.e., virtual exteriors, suggested that their visual comfort does not affect time perception at all. Biological sex was an important variable across experiments, as males experienced temporal compression of stimuli compared to females. Neuroimaging research is needed for a deeper investigation of the origin of these results. |
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