Timing can be defined as the ability to perceive temporal sequences and regulate timed behaviors. As in other animals, our ability to make accurate time estimations is crucial in order to accomplish several activities. Organisms can process time over a wide range of durations ranging from microseconds to days. In the middle of these extremes is the hundreds of milliseconds to seconds range which is important for many everyday behaviors, such as walking, speaking and dancing. Yet, how this is managed remains poorly understood. Some central issues with regard time processing in this particular time range are whether timing is governed by one, or by several different mechanisms, possibly invoked by different effectors used to perform the timing task, as well as, if cognitive capacities are also involved in rhythmic motor timing. This thesis includes three studies. Study I investigated the effects of short- term practice on a motor timing task. Analyses of the timing variability indicated that a substantial amount of learning occurred in the first hour of practice and declined afterwards, exhibiting no trend for further decrease across the remaining 60 or 210 minutes. This effect was similar across effector, amount of feedback, and interval duration. Our results suggested that training effects influenced mainly motor precision and raised the question of whether motor timing training influenced also cognitive capacities. Study II investigated the relationship between motor timing and cognition. Specifically, participants had to train a sensorimotor synchronization task (SMS) over several days, and the question was whether this training would improve cognitive performance. A near transfer effect was found between the sensorimotor synchronization task and the sustained attention task, indicating that sustained attention is involved in motor timing. Study III compared the timing variability between the eyes and the hands, as a function of four different intervals, in order to examine whether these systems are temporally controlled by the same or different mechanism(s). The results showed several positive correlations in variability, between the eye and the finger movements, which, however, were significant only for the longer intervals. In addition, they were differences in variability between the eye and the hand, for the different interval durations. In general, the pattern of results from these studies suggested that voluntary motor timing is managed by overlapping distributed mechanisms and that these mechanisms are related to systems that manage cognitive processes, such as attention. The results partially explain the well-known relationships between cognitive ability and timing.

Kreativitet är en av de mest eftertraktade och värderade mänskliga förmågorna, särskilt inom konst, teknologi och vetenskap. Vetenskapliga studier av kreativitet har visat svaga samband med personlighet och intelligens, egenskaper som annars är starka prediktorer för prestation. Kreativitet är dock rimligtvis kopplad till någon typ av prestationsaspekt av hjärnans funktion. En sådan aspekt är förmågan till timing, dvs beteenden och bedömningar som har med tid och tidsprecision att göra. Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka om timing är associerat med kreativitet, kontrollerat för personlighet och intelligens. Guilford’s Alternative Uses Task användes för att mäta kreativ originalitet och Inventory of Creative Activities and Achievements för att mäta kreativ effektivitet på 66 personer mellan 20-40 år som även testades för timingförmåga, psykometrisk intelligens och personlighet (the Big Five). Trots en signifikant korrelation mellan kreativ effektivitet och timing visade en multipel regression att personlighetsdimensionen öppenhet (O) förklarade mest varians (R2 = 13%) varvid timing utgjorde 2% (icke-signifikant) av den totalt drygt 30% förklarade variansen. Kreativ originalitet uppvisade inga signifikanta korrelationer med någon annan variabel. Ytterligare forskning kring tänkbara egenskaper som skulle kunna bidra med förståelse för kreativitet är önskvärd. / Creativity is one of the most desired and valued human abilities, particularly within art, technology and science. Scientific studies of creativity exhibit weak associations with personality as well as intelligence, traits that are otherwise strong predictors for achievement. Creativity is, however, reasonably linked to some performance aspect of brains function. One such aspect is timing ability, behaviours and assessments that include time and temporal precision. The purpose of this study was to assess whether creativity is associated with creativity, controlling for intelligence and personality. Guilford’s Alternative Uses Task was used for measuring creative originality and Inventory of Creative Activities and Achievements was used for measuring creative effectiveness for 66 participants between 20 and 40 years of age, who were also tested for timing ability, psychometric intelligence, and personality (the Big Five). While there was a significant correlation between creative effectiveness and timing, multiple regression showed that the personality dimension openness (O) explained most of the variance (R2 = 13%), wherewith timing accounted for 2% of about 30% explained variance for all other variables. Creative originality exhibited no significant correlations with any other variable. Further research on traits that may influence creativity is desirable.

This thesis consists of four research papers presenting a microdata analysis approach to assess and evaluate the Parkinson’s disease (PD) motor symptoms using smartphone-based systems. PD is a progressive neurological disorder that is characterized by motor symptoms. It is a complex disease that requires continuous monitoring and multidimensional symptom analysis. Both patients’ perception regarding common symptom and their motor function need to be related to the repeated and time-stamped assessment; with this, the full extent of patient’s condition could be revealed. The smartphone enables and facilitates the remote, long-term and repeated assessment of PD symptoms. Two types of collected data from smartphone were used, one during a three year, and another during one-day clinical study. The data were collected from series of tests consisting of tapping and spiral motor tests. During the second time scale data collection, along smartphone-based measurements patients were video recorded while performing standardized motor tasks according to Unified Parkinson’s disease rating scales (UPDRS). At first, the objective of this thesis was to elaborate the state of the art, sensor systems, and measures that were used to detect, assess and quantify the four cardinal and dyskinetic motor symptoms. This was done through a review study. The review showed that smartphones as the new generation of sensing devices are preferred since they are considered as part of patients’ daily accessories, they are available and they include high-resolution activity data. Smartphones can capture important measures such as forces, acceleration and radial displacements that are useful for assessing PD motor symptoms. Through the obtained insights from the review study, the second objective of this thesis was to investigate whether a combination of tapping and spiral drawing tests could be useful to quantify dexterity in PD. More specifically, the aim was to develop data-driven methods to quantify and characterize dexterity in PD. The results from this study showed that tapping and spiral drawing tests that were collected by smartphone can detect movements reasonably well related to under- and over-medication. The thesis continued by developing an Approximate Entropy (ApEn)-based method, which aimed to measure the amount of temporal irregularity during spiral drawing tests. One of the disabilities associated with PD is the impaired ability to accurately time movements. The increase in timing variability among patients when compared to healthy subjects, suggests that the Basal Ganglia (BG) has a role in interval timing. ApEn method was used to measure temporal irregularity score (TIS) which could significantly differentiate the healthy subjects and patients at different stages of the disease. This method was compared to two other methods which were used to measure the overall drawing impairment and shakiness. TIS had better reliability and responsiveness compared to the other methods. However, in contrast to other methods, the mean scores of the ApEn-based method improved significantly during a 3-year clinical study, indicating a possible impact of pathological BG oscillations in temporal control during spiral drawing tasks. In addition, due to the data collection scheme, the study was limited to have no gold standard for validating the TIS. However, the study continued to further investigate the findings using another screen resolution, new dataset, new patient groups, and for shorter term measurements. The new dataset included the clinical assessments of patients while they performed tests according to UPDRS. The results of this study confirmed the findings in the previous study. Further investigation when assessing the correlation of TIS to clinical ratings showed the amount of temporal irregularity present in the spiral drawing cannot be detected during clinical assessment since TIS is an upper limb high frequency-based measure.