title: Subjective present: a window of temporal integration indexed by mismatch negativity.
abstract: It has been proposed that temporal perception is implemented in a "time window" of approximately 3 s which we experience as "present". Using mismatch negativity (MMN), we tested the hypothesis whether a time window of 3 s is selective for pre-attentively detecting the violation of regularity in a stimulus sequence by employing different interstimulus intervals. Our results showed that in frontal midline areas, the amplitudes of MMN were significantly larger for the shorter interstimulus intervals up to 3 s than for the longer ones. In lateralized frontal areas, male subjects seemed to have a stronger effect in the temporal modulation of the MMN, which might deserve further investigation. We conclude that a time window of 3 s is selective for neuronal mechanisms to process deviant stimuli and that information processing is temporally segmented, creating a "subjective present" in discrete sequential steps.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, and Key Laboratory of Machine Perception (Ministry of Education), Peking University, 5 Yiheyuan Road, Beijing, 100871, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Lingyan
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Xiaoxiong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Bin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Ernst
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Pöppel
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Bao
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003265:Contingent Negative Variation / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult