Time: the back-door of perception.
Fifty years ago the neurologist MacDonald Critchley observed that parietal cortex damage impaired temporal as well as spatial experience. Whereas the physiological understanding of space has since advanced, the same cannot be said of time. However, in a novel study, recording from single neurons in the macaque, Leon and Shadlen show that a region of the parietal cortex appears to encode time. The area in which these neurons reside also contains spatially selective neurons and overlaps with the area recently reported to contain number neurons.
Walsh
Vincent
V
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Department of Psychology, University College London, 17 Queen Square, WC1N 3AR, London, UK