Altering subjective time perception leads to correlated changes in neural activity and delay discounting impulsivity

Abstract

Several accounts of delay discounting suggest subjective time perception as a contributing factor to individually varying discount rates. That is, one may seem impatient if their subjective perception of delay is longer than others perception of it. Here we build upon the behavioral and neural research on time perception, and we investigate the effects of manipulating an individuals subjective time perception on their discount rates and neural activity. Using a novel time- counting task, we found that participants discount rates are affected by our manipulations of time perception and that neural activity also correlates with our manipulations in brain regions, such as the anterior insula and the superior temporal gyri, which have been implicated in time perception. We link these behavioral and neural findings together by showing that the degree of neural activity change in response to our manipulation is predictive of the degree of change in the participants discount rates.