Specific participants vary greatly in their ability to estimate and discriminate

Specific participants vary greatly in their ability to estimate and discriminate intervals of time. versus color task was associated with higher activation in prefrontal and sub-cortical areas HSP-990 previously associated with timing. Furthermore better timing overall performance also correlated with increased volume of the right lateral cerebellum as shown by voxel-based morphometry. Our analysis also exposed that A1 service providers of the Taq1a polymorphism exhibited relatively worse performance on temporal but not color discrimination but greater activation in the striatum and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex as well as reduced volume in the cerebellar cluster. These results point to the neural bases for heterogeneous timing performance in humans and suggest that differences in performance on a temporal discrimination task are in part attributable to the DRD2/ANKK1 genotype. 1 Introduction Individuals vary greatly in their ability to HSP-990 estimate and discriminate intervals of time (Carlson & Feinburg 1968 Brown Newcomb & Kahrl 1995 This variability may arise from multiple factors including memory and decision-making processes (Buhusi & Meek 2005 Between-subject variance in time perception has been largely ignored until recently. Here we explore the neural and genetic factors that contribute to heterogeneous timing performance across individuals. Human neuroimaging studies of timing demonstrate a wide degree of heterogeneity in the neural regions that become activated during a given timing task. Recently we characterized this variability with a quantitative meta-analysis of the likelihood of activation of any given neural structure during different time perception tasks. Our results demonstrated that the likelihood of activation differed depending on the temporal context (Wiener Turkeltaub & Coslett 2010 Generally subcortical structures such as the basal ganglia and cerebellum were more likely to be activated during sub-second intervals whereas cortical regions such as the prefrontal cortex were more likely to be activated during supra-second intervals. Furthermore the right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG) and supplementary motor area (SMA) were highly likely to be active across all timing tasks. An additional finding from our meta-analysis was that the pattern of basal ganglia activation likelihood differed depending on the temporal context; given the proposed involvement of regions of the Rabbit polyclonal to ATS2. basal ganglia (i.e. caudate putamen) in different cognitive functions (Grahn Parkinson & Owen 2008 and the central role of the basal ganglia in current models of timing (Matell & Meek 2004 this differential pattern of activity may be particularly relevant. Although the results of our meta-analysis provided some clarification of the heterogeneity of neuroimaging findings for timing they are based on inferences from group performance. A shortcoming of group averaging of fMRI performance is that individual differences in activation patterns will not be detected (Fedorenko Behr & Kanwisher 2011 For example the SMA may be implicated across most timing studies but this does not guarantee that each subject matter activates the SMA towards the same degree or indeed whatsoever (Ferrandez et al. 2003). In a HSP-990 recently available study merging transcranial magnetic excitement (TMS) and electroencephalography (EEG) (Wiener et al. 2012) we discovered that the behavioral aftereffect of TMS to the proper supramarginal gyrus differed considerably between subjects regarding both capability to alter timing efficiency as well as the polarity of contingent adverse variant (CNV) a waveform that’s partly mediated from the SMA (Nagai et al. 2004). Identical results have been proven within the operating memory books where substantial variations between group and individual-based fMRI and EEG reactions have been discovered (Feredoes & Postle 2007 Vogel HSP-990 & Awh 2008 with just individual-based areas predicting behavioral disruptions from TMS (Feredoes Tononi & Postle 2007 Therefore group variations in fMRI can reveal the areas most likely to become activated during period perception however not whether those areas are differentially triggered in individual topics. One description for individual variations in activation of timing systems can be that different timing methods may be used like a function of job demands or subject matter technique (Wiener Matell & Coslett 2011 One of these of the consequences of strategy originates from latest neuroimaging proof demonstrating that systems of activated constructions differ both within and between topics like a function of whether topics employ beat-based.