organisation - the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência

NEUROMETRIC - PSYCHOMETRIC COMPARISON OF INTERVAL TIMING
PERFORMANCE
Tasks in which subjects must categorise sensory stimuli whose characteristics
are parametrically varied have been powerful tools for relating neural processing
to sensation in a rigorous and quantitative manner. We are applying the
same approach to an unconventional sensory modality, the ability to sense the
passage of time, by training rats on a two alternative forced choice interval
timing task. We can derive quantitative description of animals’ interval timing
abilities via the fitting of psychometric functions to their choice data and then
compare this to the ability of neural activity to encode the passage of time.
A tight correspondence between the animals’ behavioural performance and the
neuronal encoding of time would suggest involvement of those neural signals
in the process of timing.
Thiago Gouvea has designed the behavioural apparatus, programmed the behavioural
control required for the task, and has trained four animals. We will
soon be initiating neural recordings during task performance.
IGC ANNUAL REPORT ‘11
RESEARCH FELLOWS
80