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. 2024 May 31;19(5):e0304608.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0304608. eCollection 2024.

Effects of caffeine on temporal perception in Rattus norvegicus

Richard Keen  1 , Dalene Hardy  1   2 , Belda Jose  1   2 , H Neval Erturk  2
Affiliations

Effects of caffeine on temporal perception in Rattus norvegicus

Richard Keen et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

We report two studies that tested the effects of caffeine, the world's most widely used psychoactive drug, on temporal perception. We trained Wistar rats using the Bisection Procedure (Experiment 1) or the Stubbs' Procedure (Experiment 2) to discriminate between short and long light stimuli. Once training finished, we administered caffeine orally (0, 9.6, and 96.0 mg/kg for Experiment 1 and 0, 9.6, 19.2, and 38.4 mg/kg for Experiment 2) 15 minutes prior to testing. Relative to the control condition, the 9.6 mg/kg condition (Experiments 1 and 2) and the 19.2 mg/kg condition (Experiment 2) resulted in an increase in proportion of choosing the long response. Meanwhile, overall accuracy was not affected by any condition in both experiments. Taken together, these results are consistent with the notion that caffeine, at some doses, speeds up temporal perception. However, it is not clear why the effect disappears at higher doses.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. The proportion of choosing long is plotted as a function of how much caffeine was given across Experiments 1 and 2.
Shifts up, relative to control, indicate a speeding up of temporal perception while shifts down indicate a slowing down of temporal perception. Error bars represent the standard error of the mean. Stars represent significance at the .05 level for comparisons between each caffeine condition with their respective control condition.
Fig 2
Fig 2. The proportion of correct responses is plotted as a function of how much caffeine is given in Experiments 1 and 2.
Correct responses were calculated from trials that were potentially reinforced (i.e., 2 and 8 s trials in Experiment 1 and all trials in Experiment 2). In order to make direct comparisons across experiments, the proportion correct for only the 2 and 8 s trials was also included from Experiment 2. Error bars represent the standard error of the mean.
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