Computational Mechanisms of Temporal Anticipation in Perception and Action

Abstract

To interact effectively with our surroundings, we rely on strategies to reduce uncertainty. One important source of information is temporal regularities, which enable us to form predictions about when events will occur, and through this, prepare for them in advance. Such preparation was shown to facilitate motor planning, yet the impact of temporal anticipation on perceptual acuity is unknown, and the cognitive computations underlying this process remain debated. To answer these questions, we administered a new difficult change discrimination task with variable anticipatory periods (N=142). We show that both perceptual sensitivity and motor responses are influenced by temporal structure. Using computational modelling, we show that the cognitive operation underlying this behavior is based on a logarithmic transformation of the event hazard rate (HR) and reveal a crucial role of temporal-estimation noise in shaping this computation, both when temporal information is encoded, and when it is decoded. Together, our results highlight the fundamental contribution of anticipation in directing behavior and advance our understanding of temporal processing in the brain.