Space and time in the parietal cortex: fMRI Evidence for a meural asymmetry
How are space and time related in the brain? This study contrasts
two proposals that make different predictions about the interaction
between spatial and temporal magnitudes. Whereas ATOM implies that space and time are symmetrically related,
Metaphor Theory claims they are asymmetrically related. Here
we investigated whether space and time activate the same neural
structures in the inferior parietal cortex (IPC) and whether the
activation is symmetric or asymmetric across domains. We measured participants’ neural activity while they made temporal and spatial judgments on the same visual stimuli. The behavioral
results replicated earlier observations of a space-time asymmetry:
Temporal judgments were more strongly influenced by irrelevant spatial information than vice versa. The BOLD fMRI
data indicated that space and time activated overlapping clusters
in the IPC and that, consistent with Metaphor Theory, this activation
was asymmetric: The shared region of IPC was activated more strongly during temporal judgments than during spatial
judgments. We consider three possible interpretations of this neural asymmetry, based on 3 possible functions of IPC.
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