title: Tempo rubato : animacy speeds up time in the brain.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  How do we estimate time when watching an action? The idea that events are timed by a centralized clock has recently been called into question in favour of distributed, specialized mechanisms. Here we provide evidence for a critical specialization: animate and inanimate events are separately timed by humans.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In different experiments, observers were asked to intercept a moving target or to discriminate the duration of a stationary flash while viewing different scenes. Time estimates were systematically shorter in the sessions involving human characters moving in the scene than in those involving inanimate moving characters. Remarkably, the animate/inanimate context also affected randomly intermingled trials which always depicted the same still character.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The existence of distinct time bases for animate and inanimate events might be related to the partial segregation of the neural networks processing these two categories of objects, and could enhance our ability to predict critically timed actions.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroscience, National Research Council, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Mauro
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Carrozzo
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Moscatelli
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Lacquaniti
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007700:Kinetics; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D009038:Motion; D009415:Nerve Net; D011930:Reaction Time; D012660:Semantics; D013997:Time Factors