When emotion and time meet from human and rodent perspectives: a central role for the amygdala?

Initiated by a long stay of Valérie Doyère in the laboratory of Joseph LeDoux, a Franco-American collaborative group was formed around the topic of emotion and time perception in a comparative perspective between humans and non-human animals. Here, we discuss results from our studies on the mechanisms underlying time distortion under 2 conditions, timing of a threatening stimulus and timing of a neutral stimulus in the context of fear, with insights from neurodevelopment. Although the type of temporal distortion depends on the experimental situations, in both humans and rodents a high-arousal emotion automatically triggers acceleration of an "internal clock" system, an effect that may rely on the early maturing amygdala.

Affiliation in times of pandemics: Determinants and consequences.

Affiliation is a basic human need, especially during difficult times. To what extent did the need to affiliate limit our capacity to abide by health guidelines, in particular regarding social distancing, during the COVID-19 pandemic? We investigated this issue using questionnaire data from two samples of the French population collected during the first French lockdown (April-May 2020). We found that in men, higher social comparison orientation (sensitivity to the needs of others and inclination to help) and higher perceived threat increased the frequency of reported affiliative activities.

Subjective Time in Ordinary and Non-ordinary States of Consciousness: How Interoceptive Feelings Inform Us About the Passage of Time.

In accordance with Bud (A.D.) Craig's theories, we maintain that ascending physiological signals in their temporal dynamics are a necessary prerequisite for human time judgments.

Towards a neurodevelopmental cognitive perspective of temporal processing.

The ability to organize and memorize the unfolding of events over time is a fundamental feature of cognition, which develops concurrently with the maturation of the brain. Nonetheless, how temporal processing evolves across the lifetime as well as the links with the underlying neural substrates remains unclear. Here, we intend to retrace the main developmental stages of brain structure, function, and cognition linked to the emergence of timing abilities.

Awe and time perception.

The aim of this study was to systematically examine the effect of awe-inducing stimuli on the judgment of time. Three experiments were conducted using temporal bisection tasks in which participants viewed awe-inducing and no awe-inducing images presented for different durations and were asked to judge whether their duration was similar to a short or long anchor duration. Images of panoramic landscapes and images of the faces of well-known and admired people were used in experiments 1 and 2, respectively.