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Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease impairs temporal precision
Preprint   Open access

Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease impairs temporal precision

Matthew A Weber, Christopher M. Hunter and Nandakumar S Narayanan
Research Square
Research Square
01/20/2026
DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-8628264/v1
PMCID: PMC12869550
PMID: 41646292
url
https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-8628264/v1View
Preprint (Author's original) This preprint has not been evaluated by subject experts through peer review. Preprints may undergo extensive changes and/or become peer-reviewed journal articles. Open Access

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Abstract

Several studies have reported temporal processing deficits in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. These deficits can be quantified by interval timing paradigms that require participants to estimate or produce an interval of several seconds and require working memory for temporal rules as well as attention to time. Timing performance can be quantified by a variety of measures; however, two relatively universal metrics include: 1) temporal accuracy, defined as the mean temporal estimate and 2) temporal precision, reflected by the variability of temporal estimates. We examined temporal accuracy and precision in a meta-analysis of 14 studies in patients with Parkinson’s disease and 10 studies in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Strikingly, in both diseases, temporal precision was reliably impaired across studies, while temporal accuracy was not. Our meta-analysis suggests that despite the diversity of interval timing paradigms and the complexity of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease, temporal precision is consistently impaired in these diseases. These results advance interval timing as a reliable assay to study cognitive dysfunction in Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease and may extend to other neurological and psychiatric disorders.

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