Bridging the gap between aberrant time processing and cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia: a potential core feature?

The study of temporal perception and its disruptions in schizophrenia has long been studied in experimental psychology. As early as the late 19th century, Wilhelm Wundt explored fundamental perceptual processes, including temporal discrimination, establishing a foundation for the modern understanding of how the brain processes time 1 . In the early 20th century, phenomenologists deepened this line of enquiry, focusing on how individuals with psychopathological disorders, particularly schizophrenia, experience distortions in time. Minkowski introduced the concept of an “absence of the feeling of duration” 2 , and Jaspers examined how time perception is altered across various mental disorders, providing essential insights into the lived experiences of patients with schizophrenia 3 . Since the 1960s, proposals regarding the neural mechanisms of time processing have suggested the existence of clock-like brain oscillators 4 , 5 . These proposals led to the development of new experimental paradigms, the most characteristic of which is interval timing—i.e., the ability to process and measure the duration between events 6 . Despite these early neuroscientific contributions, the study of temporal processing in mental disorders, particularly the neural substrates involved in time processing and its relationship with other cognitive variables, fell into relative obscurity during the mid-20th century 7 . This shift occurred as research in neuropsychopathology increasingly focused on more complex cognitive constructs, such as executive functions and social cognition, especially in studies related to schizophrenia 8 , 9 . In the field of neurocognition, studies focusing on processing speed, verbal learning and memory, visuospatial learning and memory, working memory, attention/vigilance, and reasoning and problem-solving have gained prominence 10 . In the last two decades, there has been growing interest in the study of social cognition impairments in schizophrenia, especially in the areas of emotion processing, social perception, and attributional bias 11 . Studies on perceptual impairments in schizophrenia have focused on paradigms emphasising visual 12 and auditory 13 information processing, in which, according to several paradigms, temporal processing is thought to play a crucial role. In recent years, however, there has been a significant resurgence of interest in temporal perception within neuropsychology, particularly in normative contexts 14 . This renewed focus is gradually extending to the study of cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 .