Citation

Bueti D, Bahrami B, Walsh V, Rees G. J. Neurosci. 2010; 30(12): 4343-4352.

Affiliation

Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London WC1N 3AR, United Kingdom, Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, London WC1N 3BG, United Kingdom, and Neuroimaging Laboratory, Fondazione Santa Lucia, 00179 Rome, Italy.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Society for Neuroscience)

DOI

10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2254-09.2010

PMID

20335470

Abstract

Anticipating the timing of future events is a necessary precursor to preparing actions and allocating resources to sensory processing. This requires elapsed time to be represented in the brain and used to predict the temporal probability of upcoming events. While neuropsychological, imaging, magnetic stimulation studies, and single-unit recordings implicate the role of higher parietal and motor-related areas in temporal estimation, the role of earlier, purely sensory structures remains more controversial. Here we demonstrate that the temporal probability of expected visual events is encoded not by a single area but by a wide network that importantly includes neuronal populations at the very earliest cortical stages of visual processing. Moreover, we show that activity in those areas changes dynamically in a manner that closely accords with temporal expectations.

Language: en