Motor preparation tracks decision boundary crossing rather than accumulated evidence in temporal decision-making.

Abstract

Interval timing, the ability of animals to estimate the passage of time, is thought to involve diverse neural processes rather than a single central "clock" (Paton & Buonomano, 2018). Each of the different processes engaged in interval timing follows a different dynamic path, according to its specific function. For example, attention tracks anticipated events, such as offsets of intervals (Rohenkohl & Nobre, 2011), while motor processes control the timing of the behavioral output (De Lafuente et al., 2024). However, which processes are involved and how they are orchestrated over time to produce a temporal decision remains unknown. Here, we study motor preparation in the temporal bisection task, in which Human (Female and male) participants categorized intervals as "long" or "short". In contrast to typical perceptual decisions, where motor plans for all response alternatives are prepared simultaneously (Shadlen & Kiani, 2013), we find that temporal bisection decisions develop sequentially. While preparation for "long" responses was already underway before interval offset, no preparation was found for "short" responses. Furthermore, within intervals categorized as "long", motor preparation was stronger at interval offset for faster responses. Our findings support the two-stage model of temporal decisions, where "long" decisions are considered during the interval itself, while "short" decisions are only considered after the interval is over. Viewed from a wider perspective, our study offers methods to study the neural mechanisms of temporal decisions, by studying the multiple processes that produce them.Significance Statement Interval timing is thought to rely on multiple neural processes, yet little is known about which processes are involved, and how they are organized in time. We recorded the EEG of Human participants while they performed a simple temporal decision task, and focused on mu-beta activity, a signature of motor preparation. In typical non-temporal perceptual decisions, mu-beta activity reflects the accumulation of evidence. We find that in temporal decision-making, mu-beta reflects the commitment of the decision instead. This distinction stems from the uniqueness of temporal decisions, in which alternatives are considered sequentially rather than simultaneously. Studying temporal decisions as the dynamic orchestration of multiple neural processes offers a new approach to study the neural mechanisms underlying the perception of time.