Spontaneous α Brain Dynamics Track the Episodic "When".
The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience October 25, 2023 Leila Azizi, Ignacio Polti, Virginie Van Wassenhove 15 citations
The relative duration of alpha brain rhythm bursts (7-14 Hz) during quiet rest predicts how long people retrospectively estimate the rest period lasted, but only when they are not instructed to attend to time. In a magnetoencephalography (MEG) experiment, participants who were unaware they would be asked about time showed that longer alpha burst durations corresponded to longer retrospective time estimates. Alpha burst duration was a better predictor than alpha power or burst amplitude, and no other brain rhythms predicted retrospective duration. When participants timed prospectively, alpha bursts did not predict their estimates. A control experiment showed the relation persists even during a visual counting task. Alpha bursts may embody discrete states of awareness that constitute episodic timing.