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Duration Perception vs. Perception Duration

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Duration Perception vs. Perception Duration

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Timing & Time Perception (2018) DOI: 10.1163/22134468-20181135 brill.

com/time

Commentary

Duration Perception Versus Perception Duration: A Proposed


Model for the Consciously Experienced Moment

Lachlan Kent*
School of Health and Life Sciences, Federation University Australia
Received 30 April 2018; accepted 24 July 2018

Abstract
Duration perception is not the same as perception duration. Time is an object of perception in its
own right and is qualitatively different to exteroceptive or interoceptive perception of concrete ob-
jects or sensations originating within the self. In reviewing evidence for and against the experienced
moment, White (2017, Psychol. Bull., 143, 735–756) proposed a model of global integration of infor-
mation dense envelopes of integration. This is a valuable addition to the literature because it suppos-
es that, like Tononi’s (2004, BMC Neurosci., 5, 42) Integrated Information Theory, consciousness is
an integral step above perception of objects or the self. Consciousness includes the perception of ab-
stract contents such as time, space, and magnitude, as well as post-perceptual contents drawn from
memory. The present review takes this logic a step further and sketches a potential neurobiological
pathway through the salience, default mode, and central executive networks that culminates in a
candidate model of how duration perception and consciousness arises. Global integration is viewed
as a process of Bayesian Prediction Error Minimisation according to a model put forward by Hohwy,
Paton and Palmer (2016, Phenomenol. Cogn. Sci., 15, 315–335) called ‘distrusting the present’. The
proposed model also expresses global integration as an intermediate stage between perception and
memory that spans an approximate one second duration, an analogue of Wittmann’s (2011, Front.
Integr. Neurosci., 5, 66) experienced moment.
Keywords
Time perception, duration perception, time experience, default mode network, working memory,
consciousness, integrated information, depression

1. Introduction
Given that the object of perception is tangible and concrete, exteroceptive
perception of objects and interoceptive perception of the self are relatively
well-understood and conceptually distinct. Perception of abstract objects is,

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: lachkent@yahoo.com.au

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 DOI: 10.1163/22134468-20181135


2 L. Kent / Timing & Time Perception (2018)

unfortunately, comparatively fraught and easily conflated with the other two. The
perception of duration, although potentially indistinct from other abstractions of
magnitude such as space and number (Bueti & Walsh, 2009), is one example of
an abstract perceptual domain often confused with its inverse operation, i.e., the
duration of perception(s). The two are markedly distinct and utilise different neu-
ral networks but are sometimes hard to differentiate theoretically and empirically.
This paper is an attempt to clarify where and when references are made to the
perception of duration versus the duration of perceptions, and in doing so aims to
sketch a model of duration perception related to Bayesian Prediction Error Mini-
misation (PEM) and major brain networks associated with consciousness.
Of critical importance is the relationship between perception and conscious
experience. While consciousness is difficult to define absolutely, a sufficient defi-
nition to distinguish it from perception is one provided by Chalmers (1996) which
states that consciousness is the phenomenal experience which a hypothetical
zombie, who acts like a conscious being in every other way, lacks internally or sub-
jectively. More realistically, an analogous situation is one where a sleepwalker can
perceive and respond to their environment in sensible ways without being con-
scious. This distinction is critical if we are to understand the difference between
duration perception and duration of perceptions. It also relates to Tononi et al.’s
(2016) axioms of conscious experience as unitary, specific and definite. Percep-
tion of objects is multimodal, not unitary, and so the temporal characteristics of
those perceptions do not constitute conscious experience. A sleepwalker may be
able to perceive sounds, visions, textures and balance but, by combining Chalm-
ers’ (1996) and Tononi et al.’s (2016) definitions, their perceptions do not become
phenomenally unitary, specific and definite and so they remain unconscious. The
present paper will argue that, while a sleepwalker’s perceptions of concrete ob-
jects may be adequately timed, they may not perceive abstractions like time itself.
Tononi et al. (2016) also stipulated that the neural correlates of consciousness
should be “consistent with estimates of the timescale of experience” (p. 453), but
there is uncertainty as to what that timescale actually is. Tononi et al. (2016) re-
mained agnostic whereas Tononi (2004) originally allowed between a few tens
of milliseconds up to a few seconds. White (2017) argued more recently against
a duration called the experienced moment or subjective present, which Wittmann
(2011), Pöppel (1989) and others define as an interval of around 2– 3 s within
which conscious phenomenal experience takes place. White (2017) concluded
that the evidence from perception studies does not support the existence of an
experienced moment defined by duration, proposing instead that envelopes of in-
tegration vary according to the sensory modality and the amount of information
contained in a percept. The envelopes are therefore independent of duration and,
accordingly, the 2–3 s experienced moment is not defined.
It is true that the White (2017) review shows that experiments investigating
the duration of perception do not support an experienced moment. However,
Timing & Time Perception (2018) DOI: 10.1163/22134468-20181135 3

the review does not address the key distinction alluded to above. Instead, White
(2017) casts doubt on whether duration perception “is even relevant to the issue
of temporal integration in the construction of a ‘subjective present’” (p. 738). This
is a problem because White also asserts that there is a critical interval for duration
perception between 1–1.5 s meaning that, if it were deemed relevant to temporal
integration, then the experienced moment would be defined by a critical duration.
It is understandable how White (2017) came to this conclusion. In a later sec-
tion, he acknowledged that the “review deliberately avoided the issue of con-
sciousness” which otherwise could “make full sense of an envelope of integration
or ‘subjective present’” (p. 750). Without consciousness, a critical feature of the
experienced moment is lacking and the distinction between the perception of du-
ration versus duration of perceptions is obscured.
The real problem though is that the review does not in fact avoid the central
issue of consciousness. It refers to critical aspects of Chalmers’ (1996) and Tononi
et al.’s (2016) definitions in reference to global integration of locally integrated
products of modular perception. Global integration is Tononi et al.’s (2016) axiom
of conscious integration by another name, especially since “windows of temporal
integration are defined in terms of information density” (p. 735). Tononi (2004)
proposed the Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of consciousness over a decade
prior, and so the following comment by White (2017) is hard to interpret in any
way other than as a reference to previous definitions of consciousness:

Although, as in the case of speech perception, a good deal is known about local integration
(where, for present purposes, the whole of speech processing is local in the sense of being dis-
tinct from, say, visual layout processing or the kinaesthetic body map), there has been little if
any research on the integration of different local processing outputs into a globally integrated
representation, the envelope of integration as a whole. (p. 750)

This is an interesting point. A “globally integrated representation” is strikingly


similar to Tononi et al.’s (2016) axiom of integration: “In other words, the con-
tent of an experience (information) is integrated within a unitary consciousness”
(p. 452). White (2017) even uses the term experience in precisely the same way:
Thus, information currently being attended has the subjective experience of global coherence,
and this property is assumed to hold for all other information about what is going on, but this
is not so much the case for information that is not at the focus of attention. Nevertheless, it is
this experience of global coherence that perhaps does more than any other single feature to
give the envelope of integration its subjective character. (p. 750, italics added)

As for the extent to which Chalmers (1996) conflates experience and conscious-
ness, in the index of his seminal book, The Conscious Mind, the entry under
“Experience” merely says “See Consciousness” (p. 408). The same entry is also
placed under “Subjective experience” (p. 413). Experience, subjective experience
and consciousness are synonymous according to Chalmers (1996) and so, by
4 L. Kent / Timing & Time Perception (2018)

postulating global integration of local information-dense envelopes, White (2017)


is referring to none other than the integration of perceived objects into conscious-
ness as per IIT. Normally, the precise distinction between the enduring percep-
tions (i.e., of a sleepwalker) and the subjective experience of someone who is fully
conscious would not be an issue. However, White (2017) reviewed evidence for
the experienced moment which is conscious by definition (Wittmann, 2011) and
so it is important to be precise. White (2017) attempted to isolate consciousness
from the subjective present and experienced moment:
Is the “subjective present” concerned with temporal units of consciousness, or temporal units
of perception? The authors of the proposals referred to consciousness (see quotations above),
but the products of many kinds of processes, both perceptual and post-perceptual, may form
part of the contents of consciousness, so consciousness, whatever that may be, should not be
taken as defining the “subjective present.” (p. 737)

Later, when discussing global integration, White (2017) clarifies the term “post-
perceptual” by stating that the subjective present “straddles the boundary (to the
extent that there is one) between perception and memory, or between percep-
tual processing and post-perceptual cognitive processing” (p. 750). So, that only
begs the question: If perceptions and memory are the temporally short and long
contents of consciousness, and consciousness is synonymous with subjective ex-
perience (Chalmers, 1996), how could they be contained temporally by anything
besides the experienced moment? Further to this, if Tononi et al. (2016) require
that the spatio-temporal grain of consciousness be “consistent with estimates of
the timescale of experience” (p. 453), then the experienced moment has to be
consistent with global perception, not local perceptions across various modalities.
That begs a further question: What is global perception and how does it
relate to experience/consciousness and time? There is a simple answer: global
perception is analogous to duration perception. Time is not just a property of
perceptions, it is an object of perception itself. The White (2017) review and oth-
ers by the same author (White, 2018) acknowledge that temporal integration
synchronises local perceptions by cancelling out latency effects. Synchrony is a
temporal property of local perception but global perception deals with duration
and change, not static synchronous moments. The main difference between syn-
chrony and duration is that time is a property of local perceptions whereas global
perception is a property of time. As proposed by Wittmann (2011):
Whereas the duration of the functional moment is not perceived, an experienced moment
relates to the experience of an extended now. According to this conception, the experienced
moment has duration. (p. 4, italics in original)

The functional moment generates synchrony through temporal integration but


the experienced moment generates duration through global integration of per-
ception into a unitary conscious experience (Tononi et al., 2016). This is what
Timing & Time Perception (2018) DOI: 10.1163/22134468-20181135 5

is meant by the difference between the duration of perception(s) and the per-
ception of duration. White (2017) also acknowledges that global integration
“deals with the outputs of multiple processes operating on the suprasecond scale”
(p. 750), but laments that “there has been little if any research on the integration
of different local processing outputs into a globally integrated representation, the
envelope of integration as a whole” (p. 750). However, according to the view that
duration perception is analogous to global/conscious integration of local percep-
tions, the vast and varied time perception literature represents the precise type
of research that White (2017) views as lacking. His assertion (p. 738) that time
perception studies show a critical duration between 1–1.5 s proposes that there
may yet be a critical window of experienced time within which conscious experi-
ence takes place, i.e., the experienced moment. But, as White (2017) rightly points
out, it is not sufficient to merely state that time experience/perception and global
perceptual integration are synonymous. Empirical evidence must be put forward.
As such, the rest of the current paper will be devoted to substantiating the claim.

2. Consciousness and Duration Within the Experienced Moment


As stated above, there is a general confusion regarding the relationship between
consciousness, experience and duration. The account offered below is not in-
tended to explain the lack of support for a 2–3 s experienced moment in White’s
(2017) empirical analysis of perception studies, but rather to demonstrate how
conscious experience of time differs from either perception of sensory inputs
or working memory processes. It takes the position agreed upon by both White
(2017) and Wittmann (2011) that the latter two are relatively distinct. There is
functional synchronisation of sensory input over approximately the first 125 ms
within White’s (2017) envelopes of integration and Wittmann’s (2011) functional
moments. Then at longer time scales there is also mental presence, which is a cor-
ollary of working memory processes, operating over a wide range of perhaps 100
s. The only difference between the two conceptualisations is that White (2017)
claims that there is probably no “sharp distinction between the envelope of hap-
pening and mental presence” (p. 749), whereas Wittmann (2011) places the expe-
rienced moment at an intermediate time scale of approximately 1–3 s. For current
purposes it is sufficient to assume that the longest time scales of conscious experi-
ence are at the lower end of Wittmann’s (2011) definition given that this overlaps
with White’s (2017) critical range of duration perception, i.e., 1–1.5 s. The lower-
bound of duration perception is then also assumed to be the upper-bound of per-
ceptual synchronisation as proposed by White (2017), i.e., 200 ms.
The window of the duration perception is therefore assumed to span approxi-
mately one second between 200 ms and 1.25 s. As White (2017) points out, con-
sciousness contains both perceptual and post-perceptual (i.e., memory) contents
and so it is also assumed that perceptual contents enter consciousness early on
6 L. Kent / Timing & Time Perception (2018)

in process whereas memory contents are typically integrated more slowly. This
agrees with current estimates of the time scale of peak neural activity for con-
sciousness of visual perceptions between 200–250 ms (Koch et al., 2016). The
assumption is that memory contents become conscious via the same process of
global integration but at the opposite end of the time scale around 1.25 s.
The next question is: What exactly is the process of global integration and how
does it relate to duration perception? The short answer is that we do not yet know
but one proposal to be explored is that global integration is synonymous with
Hohwy et al.’s (2016) Bayesian prediction error minimisation (PEM) paradigm
called “distrusting the present”. If, as Hohwy (2013) and others propose, the brain
is fundamentally a hypothesis testing machine, then the aim is to keep errors of
predictive inference to a minimum. When prediction is likely to be accurate, for
example in familiar and moderately challenging contexts, inferences are made
thick and fast and time flows freely. However, when prediction is likely to be inac-
curate or error is more critical, such as during unpredictable emergency situations
or overly predictable boring situations, predictions are made more sparingly and
time slows down (dilates). It is the rate of updating from one predictive inference
to the next that determines the rate of perceived duration. (Hohwy et al., 2016)
In terms of the one-second window of duration outlined above, a threatening
emergency situation is assumed to make sensory-perceptual information more
salient and so the window is accelerated towards the millisecond range. It has
been known for decades that duration is commonly perceived to slow down or
dilate in an emergency because arousal spikes with adrenaline and people report
perceiving things in slow motion (Leonov & Lebedev, 1968). In an emergency,
people notice nearly every detail of things happening around them and the effect
of perceiving more change has been demonstrated experimentally to dilate dura-
tion (Herbst et al., 2013).
However, dilation of duration also occurs at the opposite extreme when people
are bored and events in the world really are occurring slowly (Zakay, 2014). In an
analogous way, people who are depressed also tend to experience duration dila-
tion regardless of the situation (Thönes & Oberfeld, 2015). With respect to the
one second duration window above, these situations are assumed to bias men-
tal activity towards memory processes in the seconds range, and depression has
been shown to cause deficits in both autobiographical (Brewin, Reynolds, & Tata,
1999; Dalgleish et al., 2007; Gibbs & Rude, 2004; Söderlund et al., 2014; Williams
& Scott, 1988; Williams et al., 2000, 2007) and working memory (Christopher &
MacDonald, 2005; Joormann & Gotlib, 2008; Rose & Ebmeier, 2006).
So there are two routes to duration dilation with seemingly opposite valence
of arousal but the same level of attention to duration. In high arousal emergen-
cy conditions, duration of perceptions is salient because there is time pressure
but in low arousal boring conditions, duration of time is salient because there
is no time pressure. Attentional effects on time perception are well-understood
Timing & Time Perception (2018) DOI: 10.1163/22134468-20181135 7

(Zakay & Block, 1996) and have been shown to affect time perception in depres-
sion (Sévigny et al., 2003). More attention paid to task makes duration accelerate
but more attention to time makes duration dilate (Zakay & Block, 1995). Arousal
and attention therefore have independent or semi-independent influences on du-
ration perception (Gable & Poole, 2012; Gil & Droit-Volet, 2012; Mella et al., 2011;
Yarrow et al., 2004).
This reinforces the notion that duration is an object of perception and not just
a property of object perception. Attention to duration when bored or depressed
is, according to Hohwy (2012), an attempt to make predictions about time from
prior experience. Prior experience is embodied in the predictive coding of auto-
biographical memory and so the rate of perceived duration in the Bayesian PEM
model called ‘distrusting the present’ is driven by processes that combine features
of attention, prediction, autobiographical memory, and duration (Hohwy et al.,
2016).
Fortunately, a region of the brain called the default mode network (DMN) has
been shown to underpin all of these functions: 1) DMN connectivity predicts
sustained attention abilities (Bonnelle et al., 2011); 2) the DMN integrates past
experiences in order to plan for the future (Buckner et al., 2008); 3) DMN activ-
ity supports autobiographical memory and prospection (i.e., expectations for the
future); and 4) DMN variability has been shown to lead to temporal awareness
(Lloyd, 2012). Two specific brain regions are of interest: 1) the inferior parietal
lobule is one of the main nodes of the DMN (Buckner et al., 2008); 2) the adja-
cent superior parietal lobule is responsible for representing abstract magnitudes
of time, space and number (Bueti & Walsh, 2009); and 3) both are part of the pos-
terior cortical “hot zone” currently identified as one of the most likely neural cor-
relates of highly perceptual conscious experiences (Koch et al., 2016). This area
contrasts with medial frontal cortex, also part of the DMN, which is thought to
be responsible for highly thought-like conscious experiences (Siclari et al., 2014).
It has also been shown that DMN connectivity reflects the level of consciousness
of non-communicative brain-damaged patients (Vanhaudenhuyse et al., 2009)
and so there is suggestive evidence that duration and consciousness both revolve
around DMN activity.
It is therefore highly likely that all three are interconnected and distinct from
the two other major brain networks, the salience and central executive net-
works, that have been separately linked to perception and working memory,
respectively. The salience and central executive networks complement the de-
fault network both in terms of function and their time scale of operation under
Wittmann’s (2011) tripartite model (Bressler & Menon, 2010; Cao et al., 2016;
Sridharan et al., 2008). Key nodes of salience network have been hypothesised
to generate rapid ‘emotional moments’ of approximately 125 ms that align with
Wittmann’s (2011) functional moments (Craig, 2009a, b). For longer time scales,
the central executive network is a higher-order function of working memory
8 L. Kent / Timing & Time Perception (2018)

(Baddeley, 2012) which, unlike the DMN, is active when processing task-related
information. Central executive working memory processes are thus assumed to
relate to Wittmann’s (2011) mental presence over extended time scales up to per-
haps 100 s.
The model proposed here to account for duration perception therefore
contrasts: 1) the first timescale up to 200 ms of the salience network that synchro-
nises perceptual data into functional moments (Craig, 2009a): 2) the second tim-
escale between 200 and 1250 ms of the DMN that leads to the global perception
and conscious experience of duration; and 3) the third timescale up to 100 s of
the central executive network’s working memory processing of mental presence
(Wittmann, 2011). The various components of each stage are illustrated in Fig. 1.
The trajectory of informational flow within Fig. 1 is then illustrated in
Fig. 2 and elaborated as follows: 1) multimodal exteroceptive sensory data is
received from asynchronous sources; 2) the internal interoceptive, autonomic,
and cardiovascular rhythms of the anterior insular (Craig, 2009a, b) and
cortico-striatal-thalamic oscillators (Allman & Meck, 2012) of the salience net-
work then synchronise incoming multimodal sensory information within the
first 125–200 ms; 3) the homeostatic and motivational salience of the incom-
ing perceptual data for the “sentient self” is then determined by the anterior

Figure 1. Schematic of three time scales of perception (functional moments), consciousness and
duration perception (the experienced moment), and working memory (mental presence), their
major brain networks and other corollaries.
Timing & Time Perception (2018) DOI: 10.1163/22134468-20181135 9

Figure 2. Informational flow through functional moments, the experienced moment and mental
presence, culminating in consciousness in the experienced moment as an analogue or corollary of
duration perception.

insular cortex in the form of a “global emotional moment”, here interpreted as


global perceptual integration (p. 1934) (Craig, 2009a); 4) the anterior insular cor-
tex then directs salient global perceptual information to either the DMN or central
executive network depending on whether or not the information is required to
perform a cognitive task (Goulden et al., 2014); 5) global perceptual information
sent to the DMN undergoes automated processing of “rapidly selecting appropri-
ate responses under predictable circumstances” (p. 12821) (Vatansever, Menon, &
Stamatakis, 2017); 6) this automatic processing of learned patterns is a process of
Bayesian inference that seeks to resolve incoming sensory-perceptual information
(i.e., sensory likelihood distribution) with prior information (i.e., prior distribu-
tion) in order to make accurate predictions about the future with minimal error
(Hohwy, 2013); 7) the process and rate of resolving sensory-perceptual informa-
tion with prior experience leads to the experience of temporal flow via a Bayes-
ian inferential mechanism called ‘distrusting the present’ (Hohwy et al., 2016); 8)
the upshot of DMN Bayesian PEM is conscious perception (Hohwy, 2012); 9) sa-
lient information sent to the central executive network is attended to via work-
ing memory processes (i.e., episodic buffer) over intervals up to approximately
100 s (Goulden et al., 2014; Wittmann, 2011); 10) episodic memory contents are
then integrated into declarative autobiographical memory and fed back into the
DMN to regulate Bayesian PEM in the form of hierarchical prior distribution(s)
and thought-like consciousness (Chen et al., 2013; Hohwy et al., 2016; Koch et al.,
10 L. Kent / Timing & Time Perception (2018)

2016; Siclari et al., 2014). According to this model, consciousness is comprised of


a relatively fast perceptual process (i.e., sensory likelihood) and a relatively slow
thought-like process (i.e., prior distribution) (Koch et al., 2016).
To be at all credible, the intermediate DMN conscious process must have some
features that lend it to taking place within the 200–1250 ms range. He and Raichle
(2009) proposed a link between slow cortical potentials (<4 Hz but generally >
1 Hz) and volitional or agentic aspects of consciousness (i.e., thought-like con-
sciousness). Northoff (2016) has more recently proposed a link between these
slow cortical potentials and “inner time consciousness” and the “width of the
present (p. 174). A recent study of DMN contributions to automatic information
processing involved an automated card-sorting task with response latencies of ap-
proximately 1200 ms (Vatansever et al., 2017) and the contribution of DMN activ-
ity to temporal awareness was assessed using inter-stimulus intervals of 1000 ms
(i.e., DMN activity is associated with off-task inter-stimulus intervals) (Grady et al.,
2006; Lloyd, 2012). Contingent negative variation (CNV), an electroencephalo-
graphic signal of predictive expectancy, also peaks with delay intervals of around
1 s (Loveless & Sanford, 1975). As with duration perception (Block & Zakay, 1997;
Gil & Droit-Volet, 2012; Mella et al., 2011; Zakay & Block, 1995, 1996), CNV is
also related to both arousal and attention processes and a critical interval window
around 1 s (Tecce, 1972).
This association between expectancy, consciousness and duration is prelimi-
nary and speculative but, as Koch et al. (2016) concluded in their review of prog-
ress towards identifying the neural correlates of consciousness, “progress in this
field will require, in addition to empirical work, testable theories that address in
a principled manner what consciousness is and what is required of its physical
substrate” (p. 317).
Duration perception research confers unique opportunities to theories of con-
sciousness to test other aspects of experience besides the timing of object aware-
ness. The rate of temporal flow is subjectively reportable and consistencies are
found in optimal and suboptimal conditions such as: 1) high flow states during
peak experiences (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2002, 2014) or mania (Bschor
et al., 2004; Mezey & Knight, 1965; Moskalewicz & Schwartz, in press); and 2)
low flow states when bored (Zakay, 2014) or depressed (Thönes & Oberfeld,
2015). Further to this, given that Bayesian PEM is a quantitative and empirically
verifiable theory, there is also opportunity to test for differences in Bayesian infer-
ence as a corollary of duration perception and conscious experience. Integrated
together in a single theoretical framework, Hohwy et al.’s (2016) ‘distrusting the
present’ and Tononi et al.’s (2016) IIT could provide a more holistic account of
thought-like and perceptual conscious experiences, respectively, that currently
evade summary explanation (Siclari et al., 2014). White’s (2018) recent review
of whether consciousness unfolds as a series of discrete frames is also a decisive
step towards understanding both the nature of consciousness and duration per-
ception. If discrete frames remain unsupported, as White (2018) suspects, then
Timing & Time Perception (2018) DOI: 10.1163/22134468-20181135 11

duration will by definition have become a key feature of consciousness as Bergson


(1913) proposed over a century ago.
One fruitful avenue of research could be duration perception associated with
depression. A meta-analysis by Thönes & Oberfeld (2015) confirmed that depres-
sion tends to slow duration perception, a phenomenon called depressive time di-
lation. Depression has also been linked to increased task-negative activity in the
anterior insular over intervals longer than the experienced moment (Wiebking
et al., 2010), suggesting that boredom-like dilation of thought-like consciousness
correlates with suppressed DMN activity (Chen et al., 2013; Koch et al., 2016; Si-
clari et al., 2014; Zakay, 2014). Contrary to this, subjective dilation of perceptual
consciousness correlates with increased DMN activity (van Wassenhove et al.,
2011) and so depression offers a way to isolate one of the two potential neurobio-
logical mechanisms controlling the rate of duration perception. Both processes
are, however, explicable under the framework of Bayesian PEM as dynamic effects
of sensory likelihood and prior distributions on predictive inference and temporal
flow (Hohwy et al., 2016). As Northoff (2018) recently proposed, an opportunity
exists to develop a ‘spatiotemporal psychopathology’ and to discover the neural
predispositions for time consciousness (Northoff, 2016) which, once elaborated,
could draw firmer conclusions than possible in this introductory review regarding
the relationship between duration perception, conscious experience, psychopa-
thology, and the neurobiological drivers of all three.
In conclusion, it is vitally important to distinguish between duration percep-
tion and perception duration. White’s (2017) review did a great service to time
perception research by clearly showing that perception duration research is insuf-
ficient to explain duration perception because, as White (2017) rightly points out,
consciousness contains both perceptual and post-perceptual contents. In order to
understand duration perception, thought-like consciousness must be integrated
into any theoretical account (Koch et al., 2016; Siclari et al., 2014). Recent ad-
vances in cognitive philosophy, such as Hohwy et al.’s (2016) ‘distrusting the pres-
ent’ paradigm, offer empirical avenues to explore duration perception via testable
theories of Bayesian PEM. The model proposed in the current paper is intended
as a theoretical sketch of the types of steps, time scales, mechanisms and brain
networks required to generate duration perception in the conscious mind. While
not intended as a fully-fledged theoretical proposal, it is hoped that the reasoning
above suffices to distinguish a clear difference between what it means to generate
a perception in time as opposed to a perception of time.

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