The neural link between stimulus duration and spatial location in the human visual hierarchy
Valeria Centanino, Gianfranco Fortunato, Domenica Bueti
Abstract
Integrating spatial and temporal information is essential for our sensory experience. While psychophysical evidence suggests spatial dependencies in duration perception, few studies have directly tested the neural link between temporal and spatial processing. Using ultra-high-field functional MRI and neuronal-based modeling, we investigated how and where the processing and the representation of a visual stimulus duration is linked to that of its spatial location. Our results show a transition in duration coding: from monotonic and spatially-dependent in early visual cortex to unimodal and spatially-invariant in frontal cortex. Along the dorsal visual stream, particularly in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), neuronal populations show common selective responses to both spatial and temporal information. In the IPS, spatial and temporal topographic organizations are also linked, although duration maps are smaller, less clustered, and more variable across participants. These findings help identify the mechanisms underlying human perception of visual duration and characterize the functional link between time and space processing, highlighting the importance of their interactions in shaping brain responses. Common organizational principles of spatial and temporal information processing are not fully understood. This study shows that the duration coding of brief visual events transforms along the human cortical hierarchy, and that duration and spatial processing interact through common neural responses and linked topographic representations.