Accumulation of Salient Perceptual Events Predicts Human Subjective Time

Abstract

Human experience of time exhibits systematic, context-dependent deviations from objective clock time, for example, time is experienced differently at work than on holiday. However, leading explanations of time perception are not equipped to explain these deviations. Here we test the idea that these deviations arise because time estimates are constructed by accumulating the same quantity that guides perception: salient events. To test this, healthy human participants watched naturalistic, silent videos and estimated their duration while fMRI was acquired. Using computational modelling, we show that accumulated events in visual, auditory and somatosensory cortex all predict ‘clock time’, but duration biases reflecting human experience of time could only be predicted from the region involved in modality-specific sensory processing: visual cortex. Our results reveal that human subjective time is based on information arising during the processing of our dynamic sensory environment, providing a computational basis for an end-to-end account of time perception.