How sensory load shapes the neural processing and perception of visual durations

Abstract

The sensory content and temporal structure of stimuli have been shown to consistently bias duration perception. Temporal intervals filled with continuous sensory input ("filled intervals"), are often perceived as lasting longer than intervals marked only by their onset and offset ("empty intervals"). Despite this robust behavioral finding, it remains unclear whether filled and empty intervals rely on similar or distinct neural mechanisms and, more generally, how sensory format shapes the neural processing of millisecond time. To address this question, we asked twenty-one healthy participants to reproduce visual durations across different stimulus configurations while high-density scalp EEG was recorded. Behavioral results revealed differences in performance across stimulus configurations. Event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded at occipito-parietal and fronto-central electrodes between 0.1 and 0.4 s after duration offset were modulated in amplitude by both stimulus duration and format. These modulations scaled with the sensory load of the stimulus and its duration, suggesting a common underlying mechanism. A Representational Similarity Analysis (RSA) of the ERP data showed that perceived time was represented more strongly than physical time particularly at occipito-parietal electrodes, but only within the 0.2-0.3 s post-offset window, where stimulus format exerted a pronounced effect on the ERP signal. These findings highlight the role of sensory processing in shaping duration perception and its neural coding, and reveal an early neural signature of perceived time in occipito-parietal electrodes. 1 Significance statementOur perception of subsecond durations is distorted by the sensory content of stimuli. Here, we investigated how stimulus configuration shapes the neural correlates of visual duration perception. Specifically, we asked whether temporal intervals filled with continuous sensory input are processed differently from those lacking such content. We found that, between 0.2 and 0.3 s after interval offset, ERP amplitudes were modulated by stimulus content, and in this same temporal window the EEG signal reflected the perceptual bias. These findings support the view that duration processing and perception are deeply rooted in sensory processing.