期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2018
卷号：115
期号：12
页码：E2879-E2887
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1713316115
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：To coordinate movements with events in a dynamic environment the brain has to anticipate when those events occur. A classic example is the estimation of time to contact ( TTC ), that is, when an object reaches a target. It is thought that TTC is estimated from kinematic variables. For example, a tennis player might use an estimate of distance ( d ) and speed ( v ) to estimate TTC ( TTC = d / v ). However, the tennis player may instead estimate TTC as twice the time it takes for the ball to move from the serve line to the net line. This latter strategy does not rely on kinematics and instead computes TTC solely from temporal cues. Which of these two strategies do humans use to estimate TTC ? Considering that both speed and time estimates are inherently uncertain and the ability of the human brain to combine different sources of information, we hypothesized that humans estimate TTC by integrating speed information with temporal cues. We evaluated this hypothesis systematically using psychophysics and Bayesian modeling. Results indicated that humans rely on both speed information and temporal cues and integrate them to optimize their TTC estimates when both cues are present. These findings suggest that the brain’s timing mechanisms are actively engaged when interacting with dynamic stimuli.
