Skip to content
DraconiticResearch
Search Sources API
201,818 studies31 sourcesUpdated 2 min ago
Peer-reviewedCC BYBrain

Sub-second and multi-second dopamine dynamics underlie variability in human time perception

  • Renata Sadibolova1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
  • Emily K. DiMarco9,10,11,12
  • Angela Jiang9,13,12
  • Benjamin Maas14,9,15,16,17,18,19
  • Stephen B. Tatter20,21,19
  • Adrian W. Laxton20,21,19
  • Kenneth T. Kishida14,20,9,10,15,16,17,18,19
  • Devin Blair Terhune1,2,4,5,22
22 affiliations
  1. 1Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London; London SE14 6NW, UK
  2. 2Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London; London SE5 8AB, UK
  3. 3School of Psychology, University of Roehampton; London SW15 4JD, UK
  4. 4Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London
  5. 5Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London
  6. 6London SE5 8AB, UK
  7. 7London SW15 4JD, UK
  8. 8School of Psychology, University of Roehampton
  9. 9Department of Translational Neuroscience, Wake Forest School of Medicine; Winston-Salem, NC, 27157, USA
  10. 10Neuroscience Graduate Program, Wake Forest School of Medicine; Winston-Salem, NC, 27157, USA
  11. 11Neuroscience Graduate Program, Wake Forest School of Medicine
  12. 12Winston-Salem, NC, 2717, USA
  13. 13Department of Translational Neuroscience, Wake Forest School of Medicine
  14. 14Department of Biomedical Engineering, Wake Forest School of Medicine; Winston-Salem, NC, 27157, USA
  15. 15Virginia Tech - Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, Wake Forest School of Medicine; Winston-Salem, NC, 27157, USA
  16. 16Department of Biomedical Engineering, Wake Forest School of Medicine
  17. 17Virginia Tech – Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, Wake Forest School of Medicine
  18. 18Winston-Salem, NC, 215, USA
  19. 19Winston-Salem, NC, 27157, USA
  20. 20Department of Neurosurgery, Wake Forest School of Medicine; Winston-Salem, NC, 27157, USA
  21. 21Department of Neurosurgery, Wake Forest School of Medicine
  22. 22London SE4 6NW, UK
Open at sourceDOICite

Abstract

Aberrant interval timing in the millisecond-to-second range is a consistent feature of neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders involving striatal dysfunction, yet its neurochemical substrates in the human brain remain poorly characterised. Striatal dopamine has long been implicated in temporal processing, but evidence from animal models and human pharmacological studies has proved difficult to reconcile, in part because endogenous dopamine dynamics in humans have been inaccessible at relevant timescales. Patients with Parkinson's disease (N=5, 62-73 years; two women) completed a temporal bisection task (300 trials), judging whether visual stimulus intervals (500-1100 ms) were closer to a learned short (500 ms) or long (1100 ms) reference. Dopamine and serotonin concentrations were measured in the caudate nucleus during awake deep brain stimulation surgery using fast-scan cyclic voltammetry. Elastic net machine-learning models trained on in vitro voltammetry data were applied to human recordings to derive dopamine and serotonin time series at 10 Hz. We used cluster-based permutation analysis to identify stimulus-aligned time windows in which dopamine or serotonin differed between short and long judgements, and entered mean concentrations from these windows as predictors of temporal performance in trial-level hierarchical mixed-effects models. Slower, steady-state dopaminergic and serotonergic tone, quantified as the mean concentration within successive multi-minute periods, was also assessed as a predictor of temporal behaviour. Finally, behavioural performance was compared with a healthy control cohort (N=17, 50-66 years; seven women). Elevated phasic dopamine (625-670 ms after stimulus onset) increased the likelihood of short judgements and was associated with reduced temporal overestimation bias. This association was independent of objective clock time, with the identical analysis yielding non-significant results for the short versus the long stimulus intervals. By contrast, tonic dopamine levels covaried with sensitivity in discriminating stimulus intervals (temporal precision). Lower tonic dopamine was associated with poorer temporal precision both within patients over the experimental session and in patients relative to healthy controls. No corresponding effects were observed for serotonin, indicating dopamine specificity across phasic and tonic timescales. By resolving endogenous striatal dopamine with sub-second precision during conscious human behaviour, this study links temporally distinct dopaminergic dynamics to dissociable aspects of timing behaviour in Parkinson's disease. This challenges accounts of dopamine as a single modulatory influence and situates these findings within the literature on dissociable effects of phasic and tonic dopaminergic signalling, reconciling discrepancies between human and animal evidence and advancing understanding of the neurochemical basis of human time perception.

Related

  1. Attractor dynamics underlie sequence working memory in data-constrained recurrent neural networks
    M. Pals, J. H. Macke
    bioRxivPreprintCC BYFull textNeurosciencebioRxiv
  2. Ventral Tegmental Area Dopamine Neuron Dynamics during Postpartum Scarcity-Adversity Depend on Caregiving Quality and Pup Proximity
    Christine H. Nguyen, Shreya Jayamohan, Millie Rincón-Cortés
    The Journal of NeurosciencePeer-reviewedPublisher termsFull textNeurosciencePMC
  3. Modulation of the speed of Intrinsic Alpha Frequency (IAF) with tACS modulates variability of illusory speech perception
    S. Deb, D. Bhunia, V. A. Singh +2
    bioRxivPreprintCC BYFull textNeurosciencebioRxiv
  4. Plant–Soil Feedbacks May Underlie Competitive Dynamics Between Co‐Occurring Invasive Annual Grasses Bromus tectorum and Ventenata dubia
    Lilly Sencenbaugh, Jane M. Mangold, Bruce D. Maxwell +2
    Ecology and EvolutionPeer-reviewedCC BY 4.0Full textEcologyCrossrefEurope PMC
  5. Dissociable Oscillatory Alpha and Aperiodic Neural Dynamics Underlie Atypical Attentional Control in Children With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
    Y. Kong, R. Lu, S.-M. Lee +7
    bioRxivPreprintCC BYFull textNeurosciencebioRxiv

Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@article{sadibolova2026subsecond,
  title = {{Sub-second and multi-second dopamine dynamics underlie variability in human time perception}},
  author = {Renata Sadibolova and Emily K. DiMarco and Angela Jiang and Benjamin Maas and Stephen B. Tatter and Adrian W. Laxton and Kenneth T. Kishida and Devin Blair Terhune},
  journal = {Brain},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  doi = {10.1093/brain/awag336},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awag336},
  note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY  - JOUR
TI  - Sub-second and multi-second dopamine dynamics underlie variability in human time perception
AU  - Renata Sadibolova
AU  - Emily K. DiMarco
AU  - Angela Jiang
AU  - Benjamin Maas
AU  - Stephen B. Tatter
AU  - Adrian W. Laxton
AU  - Kenneth T. Kishida
AU  - Devin Blair Terhune
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/26
JO  - Brain
DO  - 10.1093/brain/awag336
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awag336
AB  - Aberrant interval timing in the millisecond-to-second range is a consistent feature of neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders involving striatal dysfunction, yet its neurochemical substrates in the human brain remain poorly characterised. Striatal dopamine has long been implicated in temporal processing, but evidence from animal models and human pharmacological studies has proved difficult to reconcile, in part because endogenous dopamine dynamics in humans have been inaccessible at relevant timescales. Patients with Parkinson's disease (N=5, 62-73 years; two women) completed a temporal bisection task (300 trials), judging whether visual stimulus intervals (500-1100 ms) were closer to a learned short (500 ms) or long (1100 ms) reference. Dopamine and serotonin concentrations were measured in the caudate nucleus during awake deep brain stimulation surgery using fast-scan cyclic voltammetry. Elastic net machine-learning models trained on in vitro voltammetry data were applied to human recordings to derive dopamine and serotonin time series at 10 Hz. We used cluster-based permutation analysis to identify stimulus-aligned time windows in which dopamine or serotonin differed between short and long judgements, and entered mean concentrations from these windows as predictors of temporal performance in trial-level hierarchical mixed-effects models. Slower, steady-state dopaminergic and serotonergic tone, quantified as the mean concentration within successive multi-minute periods, was also assessed as a predictor of temporal behaviour. Finally, behavioural performance was compared with a healthy control cohort (N=17, 50-66 years; seven women). Elevated phasic dopamine (625-670 ms after stimulus onset) increased the likelihood of short judgements and was associated with reduced temporal overestimation bias. This association was independent of objective clock time, with the identical analysis yielding non-significant results for the short versus the long stimulus intervals. By contrast, tonic dopamine levels covaried with sensitivity in discriminating stimulus intervals (temporal precision). Lower tonic dopamine was associated with poorer temporal precision both within patients over the experimental session and in patients relative to healthy controls. No corresponding effects were observed for serotonin, indicating dopamine specificity across phasic and tonic timescales. By resolving endogenous striatal dopamine with sub-second precision during conscious human behaviour, this study links temporally distinct dopaminergic dynamics to dissociable aspects of timing behaviour in Parkinson's disease. This challenges accounts of dopamine as a single modulatory influence and situates these findings within the literature on dissociable effects of phasic and tonic dopaminergic signalling, reconciling discrepancies between human and animal evidence and advancing understanding of the neurochemical basis of human time perception.
SN  - 0006-8950
SN  - 1460-2156
ER  -