Interoceptive-Temporal Mismatch as a Multilevel Mechanism of Affective, Decisional, and Motor Bias: A Translational Research Proposal

This proposal advances a multilevel research program to test the hypothesis that affective, decisional, and motor biases are influenced in part by interoceptive-temporal mismatch: a discrepancy between bodily temporal states, central neural timing, and cognitively expected temporal structure. The project integrates evidence from circadian biology, subjective time perception, temporal expectation, interoception, mood science, and reinforcement learning. Prior work shows that subjective duration can emerge from perceptual change rather than from a dedicated internal clock, that temporal expectation actively prepares working memory and behavior, that subjective time is deeply embodied and linked to interoceptive and affective processing, and that circadian misalignment can worsen mood and well-being. Additional studies indicate that local molecular clocks in the prefrontal cortex, glial cells, and dopaminergic neurons influence depression-like, anxiety-like, and locomotor phenotypes, while deep reinforcement-learning systems can develop emergent temporal codes under value-based learning. Building on these findings, the present proposal formulates a testable model in which bodily timing signals, central timing states, and temporal expectations are integrated into a latent mismatch load that predicts mood, temporal precision, delay-sensitive decision-making, and motor vigor. The program includes five linked studies: a longitudinal human naturalistic study, an experimental circadian-misalignment study in humans, a mechanistic EEG/fMRI study, causal animal studies, and a state-space computational model. The proposal aims not to reduce all emotion or bias to time, but to determine whether temporal misalignment is a measurable and partially causal contributor to important classes of human bias.