Neural Network of Predictive Motor Timing in the Context of Gender Differences

Abstract

Time perception is an essential part of our everyday lives, in both the prospective and the retrospective domains. However, our knowledge of temporal processing is mainly limited to the networks responsible for comparing or maintaining specific intervals or frequencies. In the presented fMRI study, we sought to characterize the neural nodes engaged specifically in predictive temporal analysis, the estimation of the future position of an object with varying movement parameters, and the contingent neuroanatomical signature of differences in behavioral performance between genders. The established dominant cerebellar engagement offers novel evidence in favor of a pivotal role of this structure in predictive short-term timing, overshadowing the basal ganglia reported together with the frontal cortex as dominant in retrospective temporal processing in the subsecond spectrum. Furthermore, we discovered lower performance in this task and massively increased cerebellar activity in women compared to men, indicative of strategy differences between the genders. This promotes the view that predictive temporal computing utilizes comparable structures in the retrospective timing processes, but with a definite dominance of the cerebellum.