Timing the brain to time themind: Critical contributions of time-resolved neuroimaging for temporal cognition

Abstract

Time is a loaded concept, which cognitive neuroscientists have to consider from two major viewpoints simultaneously: a physicalist viewpoint consisting in providing refined descriptions and characterizations of the complex dynamical system, that is, the brain, and a psychological viewpoint consisting in understanding how different temporal phenomenologies (perceiving duration, ordering events in time, thinking about the past or the future, etc.) relate and map onto the described brain dynamics. In this chapter, we wish to emphasize the major conceptual differences between timing, seen as the inherent property of all neural processes dedicated to perception, action, and cognition, and time perception, or more generally temporal cognition, which specifically targets how the brain represents the temporal structure of events and of our environment, implicitly or explicitly. If techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) have been systematically used for timing, there is a surprising paucity of studies specifically focusing on temporal cognition. Nevertheless, the field is in full bloom, providing an adequate momentum for researchers to embrace MEG and EEG as techniques of choice to address their research questions.