We investigated whether Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) indicated the subjective dilation of time when judging the duration of arousing stimuli. Participants performed a visual temporal bisection task along with high-level and low-level arousing auditory stimuli, while we simultaneously recorded EEG. In accordance with previous studies, arousing stimuli were temporally overestimated and led to higher EPN amplitude. Yet, we observed that time dilation and EPN amplitude were significantly correlated and this effect cannot be explained by confounds from stimulus valence. We interpret our findings in terms of the pacemaker–accumulator model of human timing, and suggest that EPN indicates an arousal-based increasing of the speed of our mental clock.

我们调查了在判断唤醒刺激的持续时间时，早期后负性 (EPN) 是否表明时间的主观扩张。参与者执行视觉时间二等分任务以及高水平和低水平的唤醒听觉刺激，同时我们同时记录脑电图。根据先前的研究，唤醒刺激在时间上被高估并导致更高的 EPN 振幅。然而，我们观察到时间膨胀和 EPN 幅度显着相关，这种效应不能用刺激价的混淆来解释。我们根据人类时间的起搏器-蓄能器模型来解释我们的发现，并建议 EPN 表明我们的心理时钟速度基于唤醒的增加。