The right parietal cortex and time perception: back to Critchley and the Zeitraffer phenomenon

Abstract

We investigated the involvement of the posterior parietal cortex in time perception by temporarily disrupting normal functioning in this region, in subjects making prospective judgements of time or pitch. Disruption of the right posterior parietal cortex significantly slowed reaction times when making time, but not pitch, judgements. Similar interference with the left parietal cortex and control stimulation over the vertex did not significantly change performance on either pitch or time tasks. The results show that the information processing necessary for temporal judgements involves the parietal cortex, probably to optimise spatiotemporal accuracy in voluntary action. The results are in agreement with a recent neuroimaging study and are discussed with regard to a psychological model of temporal processing and a recent proposal that time is part of a parietal cortex system for encoding magnitude information relevant for action.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by The Medical Research Council, by The Oxford Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, and an equipment grant from The Wellcome Trust to the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. Vincent Walsh is supported by the Royal Society.