RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Accumulation of Salient Perceptual Events Predicts Subjective Time JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 2020.01.09.900423 DO 10.1101/2020.01.09.900423 A1 Sherman, Maxine T. A1 Fountas, Zafeirios A1 Seth, Anil K. A1 Roseboom, Warrick YR 2020 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/03/19/2020.01.09.900423.abstract AB Human experience of time exhibits systematic, context-dependent deviations from objective clock time. For example, time is experienced differently at work than on holiday. The cognitive and neural bases of how time perception interacts with the content of experience remain unclear, and leading explanations of human time perception are not equipped to explain this interaction. We propose an alternative account of human time perception, based on the dynamics of sensory processing. Our approach naturally links content of experience with time perception through a common foundation in basic sensory processing. We provide evidence for this proposal in model-based analyses of the dynamics of perceptual processing in an artificial neural network and in the activity of human sensory cortex. Healthy human participants watched naturalistic, silent videos and estimated their duration while fMRI was acquired. The same videos were used as stimuli for the artificial network. We constructed a computational model that predicted video durations from salient events in the activity of the artificial network, or in participants’ visual cortex. The artificial network model reproduced human-like duration estimates, including biases in estimation depending on the content of a given video. Most importantly, the model based on human visual cortex activity reproduced trial-by-trial biases in our human participants’ subjective reports, whereas control models trained on auditory or somatosensory activity did not. Together, 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.Significance Statement Our perception of time depends on the contents of experience, reflected in expressions such as “a watched pot never boils”. Prevailing accounts of human time perception cannot provide good explanations for this. We tested a new explanation: time perception arises from the processing of our dynamic sensory environment. Supporting this theory, human participants’ duration reports of silent videos correlated with estimates we reconstructed from activity in the visual cortex of their brain while they watched those videos. This was not a brain-wide phenomenon; reconstructions based on other brain regions did not correlate with subjective reports of duration. Our results validate our new theory, linking content of experience and perception of time through a common foundation in basic sensory processing.