The Brain's Two Clocks Help Us Anticipate the Future

That moment when you step on the gas pedal a split second before the light changes, or when you tap your toes even before the first piano note of Camila Cabello’s “Havana” is struck. That’s anticipatory timing. One type relies on memories from past experiences. The other on rhythm. Both are critical to our ability to navigate and enjoy the world. New UC Berkeley research shows the neural networks supporting each of these timekeepers are split between two different parts of the brain, depending on the task at hand. “Whether it’s sports, music, speech or even allocating attention, our study suggests that timing is not a unified process, but that there are two distinct ways in which we make temporal predictions and these depend on different parts of the brain,” said study lead author Assaf Breska, a postdoctoral researcher in neuroscience at UC Berkeley. The findings, published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, offer a new perspective on how humans calculate when to make a move. “Together, these brain systems allow us to not just exist in the moment, but to also actively anticipate the future,” said study senior author Richard Ivry, a UC Berkeley neuroscientist. Breska and Ivry studied the anticipatory timing strengths and deficits of people with Parkinson’s disease and people with cerebellar degeneration. They connected rhythmic timing to the basal ganglia, and interval timing – an internal timer based largely on our memory of prior experiences – to the cerebellum. Both are primal brain regions associated with movement and cognition. Moreover, their results suggest that if one of these neural clocks is misfiring, the other could theoretically step in. “Our study identifies not only the anticipatory contexts in which these neurological patients are impaired, but also the contexts in which they have no difficulty, suggesting we could modify their environments to make it easier for them to interact with the world in face of their symptoms,” Breska said. Non-pharmaceutical fixes for neurological timing deficits could include brain-training computer games and smartphone apps, deep brain stimulation and environmental design modifications, he said. https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/news/the-brains-two-clocks-312061?utm_campaign=Newsletter_TN_BreakingScienceNews&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=67689584&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9XrZjrTtdok2DO6sUibzEuoTaZXndL0-mRAwBcZpOHdoG1ez8AYL2nI22HzpI4KElnO3J9KtVJrJVpNvHc7JSb-GR4Bw&_hsmi=67689584