Subjective present: a window of temporal integration indexed by mismatch negativity
It has been proposed that temporal perception is implemented in a time window of approximately 3s which we experience as present. Using mismatch negativity (MMN), we tested the hypothesis whether a time window of 3s is selective for pre-attentively detecting the violation of regularity in a stimulus sequence by employing different interstimulus intervals. Our results showed that in frontal midline areas, the amplitudes of MMN were significantly larger for the shorter interstimulus intervals up to 3s than for the longer ones. In lateralized frontal areas, male subjects seemed to have a stronger effect in the temporal modulation of the MMN, which might deserve further investigation. We conclude that a time window of 3s is selective for neuronal mechanisms to process deviant stimuli and that information processing is temporally segmented, creating a subjective present in discrete sequential steps.
subjective present mismatch negativity temporal window gender difference