Timing and Counting
Psychology 3906
Introduction
• Just like spatial stuff in a sense• Time passes• Would make sense to be able to encode
this• Would make sense to respond to this• Both long and short intervals have been
studied
Circadian timing
• Much of what happens on this planet depends on the time of day
• From fungi to humans, our baheviour is rhythmic
• Studied through entrainment– Synchronizing the external and the internal– Endogenous rhythms are a tad more or
less than 24 hr
What makes entrainment special?
• Agent acts in absence of other cues
• Rhythms adjusted
• Stable phase relationship
• Removal changes pattern
genes
• Tau in hamsters
• Per in drosophila
• Genetic structure almost the same which is fracking cool
Interval timing
• Seconds or minutes rather than hours
• Train the animal to an FI
• Peak procedure with empty trials
• Weber’s Law
• Resetting
Other theories
• Connectionist modeling and oscillators
• BeT
• BeT not so good on trial by trial data
• Connectionist model may be the best
Counting
• Seems unlikely to some, but why not?
• Many - few discriminations
• Olthoff, Iden and Roberts (1997)
Conclusions
• Animals have abilities that may surprise us
• However, we should not be surprised, keeping track of time and number is really important for things like foraging