Time estimation in patients with prefrontal cortex (PFC) damage is often inaccurate. The relationship between PFC and estimation of short time intervals has been examined. However, it remains unclear whether PFC damage affects estimation of longer time intervals. Here, we investigated the ability of patients and healthy subjects to verbally estimate a period of 30 min, using a method easily applied in clinical settings. In 99 patients with brain damage, we compared under and normal ranges of time in patients with PFC damage or damage to other brain areas with the chi‐squared test. Subsequently, we conducted a discriminant analysis and a multiple linear regression analysis to identify specific brain areas affecting time estimation. We observed a significantly larger number of patients who overestimated 30 min in the group with bilateral PFC damage compared to patients with damage to other regions. Discriminant analysis revealed that damage of right lateral PFC and left medial PFC contributed to discrimination between the normal range and overestimation groups. Multiple linear regression analysis indicated that right lateral PFC damage strongly affected overestimation of a 30‐min interval. Neuropsychological test results revealed lower general cognitive function scores and orientation scores in overestimation group. The length of estimated time and the score of delayed word recall were negatively correlated. We propose that these may require encoding, maintenance, and updating of memory and are indirectly related to contextual memory. We discuss hypotheses on contextual memory segmentation and reconstruction to clarify the mechanism of impaired time overestimation in PFC‐damaged patients.

中文翻译：

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对前额叶皮层损伤后的回顾性时间估计。

前额叶皮质（PFC）损伤患者的时间估计通常不准确。已经检查了PFC和短时间间隔估计之间的关系。但是，尚不清楚PFC损坏是否会影响较长时间间隔的估计。在这里，我们调查了患者和健康受试者使用易于在临床环境中应用的方法进行口头估计30分钟的能力。在99名脑损伤患者中，我们用卡方检验比较了PFC损伤或其他脑区损伤患者的正常时间范围和正常时间范围。随后，我们进行了判别分析和多元线性回归分析，以识别影响时间估计的特定大脑区域。我们观察到，与双侧PFC损伤相比，双侧PFC损伤组中被高估30分钟的患者数量要多得多。判别分析表明，右侧外侧PFC和左侧内侧PFC的损伤导致正常范围和高估组之间的区别。多元线性回归分析表明，右侧PFC损伤严重影响了30分钟间隔的高估。神经心理学测试结果显示，高估组的总体认知功能得分和取向得分较低。估计的时间长度和延迟单词回忆的分数呈负相关。我们建议这些可能需要对内存进行编码，维护和更新，并且与上下文内存间接相关。