Irena Arslanova

How we perceive time is shaped by attention and emotion, but more recent work suggests that information related to one’s self can also expand subjective time. However, previous self-relevance manipulations have been confounded with familiarity, affective meaning, or embodiment. Across three online experiments, we tested whether minimal self-relevance created through arbitrary shape-label associations was sufficient to bias duration perception. Participants learned that geometric shapes referred to themselves, a stranger, and, in Experiments 2 and 3, a friend. They then completed a non-temporal task probing the learned associations, followed by a duration bisection task in which they estimated the duration of the associated shapes. The non-temporal tasks produced robust self-prioritisation: self-associated shapes were processed faster and more accurately than stranger-associated shapes, with evidence for a graded self–friend–stranger pattern in Experiments 2 and 3. Yet self-association did not produce the predicted temporal expansion. A small increase in temporal precision for self-associated shapes in Experiment 1 did not replicate, and pooled analyses showed only very small temporal effects. These findings suggest a distinction between minimal, task-instructed self-associations that can bias non-temporal decisions and richer forms of self-relevance that may be needed to shape time experience.

The capacity of the tactile system to process multiple simultaneous stimuli is restricted. One solution could be to prioritize input from more informative sources. Here, we show that sensory weighting accorded to each finger during multidigit touch is biased in a direction-dependent manner when different motions are delivered to the fingers of the same hand. We argue that tactile inputs are weighted based on purely geometric information to prioritize “novel” information from the leading finger.

Somatosensory cortex (SCx) has been shown to crucially contribute to early perceptual processes when judging other’s facial emotion expressions. Here, we investigated the specificity of SCx activity to angry, happy, sad and neutral emotions and the role of personality factors. We assessed participants’ alexithymia (TAS-20) and depression (BDI) levels, their cardioceptive abilities and recorded changes in neural activity in a facial emotion judgment task. During the task, we presented tactile probes to reveal neural activity in SCx which was then isolated from visual carry-over responses. To obtain pure SCx emotion effects, SCx activity elicited by neutral emotion expressions was subtracted from angry, happy, and sad expressions. We show distinct modulations of SCx activity to angry and happy expressions. Moreover, the SCx anger response was predicted by individual differences in trait alexithymia. Thus, emotion expressions of others are uniquely presented in the observer’s neural body representation and are shaped by their personality trait.

Successful social interactions require a good understanding of the emotional states of other people. This information is often not directly communicated but must be inferred. As all emotional experiences are also imbedded in the visceral or interoceptive state of the body (i.e., accelerating heart rate during arousal), successfully inferring the interoceptive states of others may open a window into their emotional state. But how well can people do that? Here, we replicate recent results showing that people can discriminate between the cardiac states (i.e., the resting heartrate) of other people by simply looking at them. We further tested whether the ability to infer the interoceptive states of others depends on one’s own interoceptive abilities. We measured people’s performance in a cardioception task and their self-reported interoceptive accuracy. Whilst neither was directly associated to their ability to infer the heartrate of another person, we found a significant interaction. Specifically, overestimating one’s own interoceptive capacities was associated with a worse performance at inferring the heartrate of others. In contrast, underestimating one’s own interoceptive capacities did not have such influence. This pattern suggests that deficient beliefs about own interoceptive capacities can have detrimental effects on inferring the interoceptive states of other people.

Perception of passing time can be distorted1. Emotional experiences, particularly arousal, can contract or expand experienced duration, via its interactions with attentional and sensory processing mechanisms2,3. Current models suggest that perceived duration is constructed from accumulation processes4,5 and is encoded from temporally evolving neural dynamics6,7. Yet, all neural dynamics and information processing ensue at the backdrop of continuous interoceptive signals originating from within the body. Indeed, phasic fluctuations within the cardiac cycle impact neural and information processing8-15. Here, we show that these momentary cardiac fluctuations distort experienced time, and that their effect interacts with subjectively experienced arousal. In a temporal bisection task, durations (200 - 400 ms) of an emotionally neutral visual shape or auditory tone (Experiment 1) or of an image displaying happy or fearful facial expressions (Experiment 2) were categorised as short or long16. Across both experiments, stimulus presentation was time-locked to systole, when the heart contracts and baroreceptors fire signals to the brain, and to diastole, when the heart relaxes, and baroreceptors are quiescent. When participants judged the duration of emotionally neural stimuli (Experiment 1), systole led to temporal contraction, while diastole led to temporal expansion. Such cardiac-led distortions were further modulated by the arousal ratings of the perceived facial expressions (Experiment 2). At low arousal, systole contracted while diastole expanded time, but as arousal increased, this cardiac-led time distortion disappeared, shifting duration perception towards contraction. Thus, experienced time contracts and expands within each heartbeat – a balance that is disrupted under heightened arousal.

Object manipulation involves encoding spatially and temporally extended tactile signals, yet most studies emphasize minimal units of tactile perception (e.g., selectivity). Instead, we asked participants to average two tactile motion trajectories delivered simultaneously to two different fingerpads. Our results show strong integration between multiple tactile inputs, but subject to limitations for inputs delivered within a hand. As such, the present study establishes a paradigm for studying unified experience of touch despite distinct stimulus elements.