Interval‐timing Protocols and Their Relevancy to the Study of Temporal Cognition and Neurobehavioral Genetics

Humans and other animals can be shown to process temporal information as if they use an internal stopwatch that can be “run”, “paused”, and “reset” on command and whose speed of “ticking” is adjustable. In addition, interval-timing behavior can be separated into “clock”, “memory”, and “decision” stages of information processing such that one stage can be modified without changing the others. Moreover, interval-timing procedures can be used to diagnose the behavioral abnormalities associated with transgenic, “knock-out”, and “knock-down” mouse models of human diseases. In conjunction with interval-timing tasks, evaluation of spatial memory and emotional regulation provides the necessary information for identifying the most-likely locus of behavioral deficits in genetically modified mice. Consequently, the timing and immersive memory and emotional regulation (TIMER) test battery outlined here is recommended as a tool for behavioral phenotyping.