The ability of the brain to process time in the seconds-to-minutes range is a fascinating problem given that the basic electrophysiological properties of neurons operate on a millisecond time scale. Neuropsychological studies of humans and other animals with damage to the basal ganglia have indicated that these structures play an important role in timing and time perception. Parkinson’s disease patients, for example, show evidence of a slowed internal clock and the “coupling” of durations stored in temporal memory when tested off of their dopaminergic medication. These studies have shown that the normal cognitive functions of the basal ganglia are heavily dependent upon dopamine-regulated neuronal firing in the cortex and striatum. Moreover, the electrophysiological properties of striatal medium spiny neurons within the basal ganglia suggest that these neurons may serve as a coincidence detectors of cortical and thalamic oscillatory input in order to provide the basis for duration discrimination in the seconds-to- minutes range. Recent findings obtained from ensemble recording in the prefrontal/cingulate cortex and the anterior dorsal striatum of rats performing in peak-interval timing procedures indicate that striatal neurons are able to encode specific durations in their firing rate in a “perceptron-like” manner. These findings correspond well with fMRI data obtained from human participants performing similar timing tasks and lend support to the striatal beat-frequency model of interval timing.