Happy to share our new preprint:
Uncovering the representational geometry of durations
Is time represented along a single mental timeline? We combine behaviour + EEG to show that duration is organised in a richer, multidimensional space.
w/ @lnalborczyk.bsky.social & @virginievanw.bsky.social
@timingresforum.bsky.social #TRFpaper
More broadly, understanding time perception may require moving beyond the idea of a mental timeline, and instead characterising how durations are organised within a structured representational geometry; opening a new avenue for studying the geometry of human duration space.
Over time, neural representations progressively align with the behavioural organisation of durations.
Duration is thus better characterised not as a single ordered magnitude, but as a multidimensional representational space shaped by magnitude, context, and intrinsic dynamics.
This geometry also unfolds dynamically in the brain.
Around 150 ms after duration offset, EEG patterns primarily reflect a logarithmic-like encoding of duration.
From around 300 ms onward, a more structured, spring-like geometry emerges.
Our results show that the psychological space of durations is not 1D. Instead, it is best captured by 3 latent dimensions, reflecting magnitude, context (distance to mean), and a periodic component.
Together, these dimensions are consistent with a helical-like geometry, rather than a simple line.
In two separate sessions, participants judged the similarity of all pairs drawn from a set of 10 durations, and performed an EEG oddball task using the same durations.
We built RDMs from both behavioural and EEG data, and compared them with theoretical models of duration organisation.
A dominant idea is that durations are represented along a 1D mental timeline, from short to long.
But this leaves a key question open: what is the actual geometry of duration representations?
We addressed this question using similarity judgements, EEG, and RSA.
Happy to share our new preprint:
Uncovering the representational geometry of durations
Is time represented along a single mental timeline? We combine behaviour + EEG to show that duration is organised in a richer, multidimensional space.
w/ @lnalborczyk.bsky.social & @virginievanw.bsky.social
A heat map of left vs right Parisian voters put next to a heat map of number of cats in Paris for no particular reason
Objects warp space in our mind, and events warp time in our mind. @samiyousif.bsky.social and I teamed up to review the work in these two literatures and suggest that there may be deep connections across them (with analogous influences of objects on space and events on time).
1/6 Happy to share our new paper with @grassocamille.bsky.social and @virginievanw.bsky.social: "Nested contextual change and the temporal compression of episodic memory". www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Our new paper is now out showing how time perception in animals is linked to their ecology. Using data from 237 species we show temporal perception is faster in species that fly and pursuit predators www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🌐
AND I’ve been awarded a Global Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship 🎉 with Dr. Kishida and @nfaivre.bsky.social to pursue MIND: combining voltammetry & ephys to test how phasic dopamine fluctuations shape perceived duration and neural dynamics.
Feeling unbelievably lucky and grateful 🫶⏱️
I’ve just moved to the US to train in human voltammetry with Dr. Kishida and Dr. @nfaivre.bsky.social, as part of Nathan's VOLTA project, to study the neurochemical x electrophy' bases of the felt duration of conscious experience. Feeling truly grateful to be here, and for the trust and support.
I can’t quite believe I’m writing this, but… 🇺🇸✨
Are you sure there’s no mosquito in the room?
With @matanmazor.bsky.social, Chichi Dézier, @nfaivre.bsky.social & Louise Goupil, we study how we combine multiple sensory sources to be confident in presence and absence: While detection rely on one modality, confidence requires both channels to align!
still one of the best explanations of principal component analysis (pca), explained at different levels from layman to the more math inclined stats.stackexchange.com/a/140579/132...
Modeling Speed–Accuracy Trade-Offs in the Stopping Rule for Confidence Judgments! Now out in #PsychologicalReview (aka we can finally say we do comp models)! Led by @stefherregods.bsky.social @lucvermeylen.bsky.social @pierreledenmat.bsky.social
Paper: desenderlab.com/wp-content/u... Thread ↓↓↓
If you analyse time-resolved data (M/EEG, iEEG, pupillometry, force recordings…) and feel limited by cluster-based permutation tests (CBPTs); especially when trying to determine when an effect starts or ends; you may want to try our new R package: lnalborczyk.github.io/neurogam/
#rstats #brms #EEG
Hey, listen! Very excited for the next @timingresforum.bsky.social virtual Journal Club!
Farzaneh Najafi will be giving a talk on her recent work on intrinsic timing and ramping dynamics in visual and parietal cortices. Registration link below!
Wed 12/10 @ 10am EST
mailchi.mp/864719714f87...
Our review on intracranial research on consciousness is now out as a preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2510.08736. I believe that intracranial recordings provide one of the most exciting avenues for research on consciousness right now! If you agree, I think you will find the review interesting 🤓
If you attend #TRF4 in Tokyo and always wondered how humans represent durations, make sure to check out @grassocamille.bsky.social’s talk on Sunday morning!
Spoiler: Durations are mentally organised along (at least) three interpretable dimensions! More complex structure than we previously assumed.
🚨 New preprint! Impact of Task Similarity and Training Regimes on Cognitive Transfer and Interference 🧠
We compare humans and neural networks in a learning task, showing how training regime and task similarity interact to drive transfer or interference.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Very exciting article by Farzaneh Najafi (not on Bsky?) on interval timing as an intrinsic property of visual cortex!
Intrinsic interval timing, not temporal prediction, underlies ramping dynamics in visual and parietal cortex, during passive behavior
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Very excited to have @brynnsherman.bsky.social join us for the next @timingresforum.bsky.social Virtual Journal Club! Please join us for what should be a very interesting talk on her recent work! Sign-up details below:
mailchi.mp/28692b147cb0...
Great to have another paper with @chazfirestone.bsky.social @ianbphillips.bsky.social and the brilliant Hanbei Zhou out! In this paper we demonstrate that stimuli within events are perceived further apart in time — an event-based analog of “object-based warping”. psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...
Job announcement 📢
@shawnrhoadsphd.bsky.social and I are looking for a joint postdoc interested in computational models of social interaction!
Interested? If you’ll be at #rlc2025 (or I missed you at #cogsci2025) feel free to reach out with any questions!
apply.interfolio.com/165809
