What does scalar timing tell us about neural dynamics?
Name
Shouval-2014-What does scalar tim.pdf
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Author(s)
Shouval, Harel Z.
Hussain Shuler, Marshall G.
Agarwal, Animesh
Gavornik, Jeffrey
Date Issued
June 2014
Journal
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
Publisher
Frontiers Research Foundation
Citation
Shouval, Harel Z., Marshall G. Hussain Shuler, Animesh Agarwal, and Jeffrey P. Gavornik. “What Does Scalar Timing Tell Us About Neural Dynamics?” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 8 (June 19, 2014).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The “Scalar Timing Law,” which is a temporal domain generalization of the well known Weber Law, states that the errors estimating temporal intervals scale linearly with the durations of the intervals. Linear scaling has been studied extensively in human and animal models and holds over several orders of magnitude, though to date there is no agreed upon explanation for its physiological basis. Starting from the assumption that behavioral variability stems from neural variability, this work shows how to derive firing rate functions that are consistent with scalar timing. We show that firing rate functions with a log-power form, and a set of parameters that depend on spike count statistics, can account for scalar timing. Our derivation depends on a linear approximation, but we use simulations to validate the theory and show that log-power firing rate functions result in scalar timing over a large range of times and parameters. Simulation results match the predictions of our model, though our initial formulation results in a slight bias toward overestimation that can be corrected using a simple iterative approach to learn a decision threshold.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Picower Institute for Learning and Memory
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Creative Commons Attribution
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00438
