Embodied Time: Neural and Bodily Foundations of Time Perception
Marc Wittmann
Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, Freiburg, Germany
Based on recent conceptual and empirical work, this talk proposes a framework in which physiological bodily changes—underlying feeling states—serve as internal signals for encoding event duration and the sense of time passage. Neuroimaging findings show that increasing activity in the posterior insular cortex tracks temporal processing in the multi-second range. In addition, interoceptive awareness, heart rate variability, and heartbeat-evoked brain potentials predict individual timing accuracy. Converging evidence from two large meta-analyses of nearly 100 neuroimaging studies confirms that duration processing consistently involves the insular cortex alongside the supplementary motor area (SMA). I argue that continuous bodily input forms a functional anchor for both phenomenal self-awareness and the experience of time. The entanglement of self-reflective consciousness, emotion and body awareness with the experience of time is prominently disclosed in experiences of flow and boredom, in peak states of altered states of consciousness, and in several psychiatric and neurological conditions.