Learning of Periodic and Aperiodic Motor Patterns in Humans Suggests Different Timing Mechanisms

KAREN CHENG; DAISY VALLESFINO; RODRIGO LAJE; DEAN V. BUONOMANO

San Diego

Congreso; Society for Neurocience, 2013 Annual Meeting; 2013

Society for Neuroscience

Timing on the order of hundreds of milliseconds is critical to most forms of sensory and motor processing, including the perception and production of speech and music. While the neural mechanisms underlying timing in this range are not known, a critical issue relates to whether it relies on a centralized dedicated mechanism, or whether there are multiple mechanisms and circuits contributing to timing. In support of the multiple mechanisms hypothesis a number of findings suggests that the timing of periodic and aperiodic patterns exhibits different psychophysical signatures and may engage different circuits. Questions: 1. Does subdivision improve timing of a periodic motor task? 2. Is timing performance significantly different during periodic and aperiodic tasks? 3. Is the variance signature during periodic and aperiodic tasks most consistent with a ?reset? or ?continuous? timing strategy?