The association between temporal sensitivity, sense of agency, and occipital peak alpha frequency.

For appropriate behaviour in response to one’s surroundings, an accurate perception of the environment is essential. One key element of this is the grouping of temporal information. Temporal grouping is dependent on the individual`s temporal sensitivity and is reflected in the temporal binding window. Previous literature has shown alpha oscillations are a potential neural mechanism of temporal sensitivity. Moreover, there is preliminary evidence linking temporal sensitivity with time perception and sense of agency. However, the link between sense of agency and alpha oscillations has remained largely theoretical, with no studies directly investigating this link. Similarly, the link between time perception and alpha oscillations is not established, with the few studies that do directly assess this relationship allowing for alternative explanations. This thesis first reports three studies exploring the relationship between temporal binding window, time perception and sense of agency while also considered alpha oscillations as their potential neural mechanism. Findings indicated that the temporal binding window and sense of agency in simple action-outcome relationships are related processes, with alpha oscillations being a potential shared neural mechanism (Study 2). Yet, when complex action-outcome relationships are involved this link is less strong. That is, complex action-outcome relationships present a wider range of possible agency cues that are relied upon instead of temporal cues (Study3). When considering time perception, an association was not found with either temporal binding window or alpha oscillations (Study1). In the fourth study, we showed that both the sense of agency window and the temporal binding window could be modified by brief perceptual training, whereas alpha oscillations stayed unchanged. Taken together, these findings suggest that changes in cognitive processes take place immediately following the perceptual training due to temporarily shifting the point of subjective simultaneity towards the optimum in response to learning and development. However, for this change to become permanent, changes in neural system (alpha oscillations) should be established. Such neural changes have shown to require three or more months of learning and development. While these findings primarily serve to show the existence of relationships between the above processes, they also provide substantial implications and suggestions for further research.