Yan Bao

Patients with lesions in the visual cortex are blind in corresponding regions of the visual field, but they still may process visual information, a phenomenon referred to as residual vision or “blindsight”. Here we report behavioral and fMRI observations with a patient who reports conscious vision across an extended area of blindness for moving, but not for stationary stimuli. This completion effect is shown to be of perceptual and not of conceptual origin, most likely mediated by spared representations of the visual field in the striate cortex. The neural output to extra‐striate areas from regions of the deafferented striate cortex is apparently still intact; this is, for instance, indicated by preserved size constancy of visually completed stimuli. Neural responses as measured with fMRI reveal an activation only for moving stimuli, but importantly on the ipsilateral side of the brain. In a conceptual model this shift of activation to the “wrong” hemisphere is explained on the basis of an imbalance of excitatory and inhibitory interactions within and between the striate cortices due to the brain injury. The observed neuroplasticity indicated by this shift together with the behavioral observations provide important new insights into the functional architecture of the human visual system and provide new insight into the concept of consciousness.

Philosophers and cognitive scientists have long debated about the entailments among “the true, the good, the beautiful” (TGB hereafter). In the current article, we directly probed mainland Chinese subjects’ cognitive entailment among TGB. Using 1–7 (Experiment 1) and 1–6 (Experiment 2) Likert scales, we convergently observed that mainland Chinese subjects tend to think that the beautiful is not the true, and that the good is the beautiful. Additionally, Experiment 1 also revealed that mainland Chinese subjects tend to think that the true is not the beautiful. Some of these results may reflect anthropological universals, and some others may reflect cultural specifics. Experiment 3 revealed that the most popular translation of TGB in Chinese into English is rather “the true, the kind, the beautiful”, suggesting that the three concepts mapped to TGB in Chinese is not one-to-one mapped to the three concepts mapped to TGB in English. Therefore, caution should be exercised when making cross-linguistic or cross-cultural comparisons about TGB in the future.

Even though in physics “time” is considered to be continuous, how the brain and mind deal with time might be different. It has been proposed that in cognition, time windows provide logistic platforms for information processing, such as the low‐frequency 3‐s time window. The following series of behavioral experiments may shed light on the dynamics within such a time window. Using a duration reproduction paradigm, we first replicated a pattern of reproduced duration observed in a previous single‐case study. Specifically, the reproduction increases as the pause between standard duration and reproduction increases, but only within the time window of some 3 s; when the pause goes beyond 4 s, the reproduction reaches a plateau of a subjective set‐point. This increasing phase is named the “temporal transition zone.” Three more experiments were performed to test the features of the transition zone as a low‐frequency time window. It is also observed with different standard durations (2, 3, 4.5 s, in Experiment 2), and even when the frequency of the auditory stimuli was different in standard and reproduction (300 Hz in standard duration and 400 Hz in reproduction, in Experiment 4). The transition zone was observed only with pause durations of 2 to 3 s; when the shortest pause duration was 5 s, the transition zone was no longer observed, and the reproduction was stable at the subjective set‐point (in Experiment 3). Taken together, we suggest that the temporal transition zone indicates a pre‐semantic logistic platform to organize and process the information flow; in such a time window of some 3 seconds, the identity of an ongoing event is substantiated, building the “subjective present.”

The perception of short-term temporal intervals has been suggested to be modulated by the circadian clock, yet systematic studies investigating this relationship are scarce. In this study, we examined the diurnal variations in temporal reproduction around 2-3 seconds with different stimulus eccentricities. Eighteen female participants completed a visual temporal reproduction task at nine time points throughout the day. The results showed significant interactions between clock time and duration, implying diurnal rhythmic variations in temporal reproduction. The reproduction of shorter duration (1500 ms) was overestimated with its highest accuracy in the morning, while the reproduction of longer duration (4500 ms) was underestimated with an approximate 3-hour advancement in acrophase than the shorter duration (1500 ms). No significant eccentricity effects were observed, suggesting homogenous temporal processing across visual fields. The results suggest the presence of diurnal rhythms in the perception of short-term temporal durations, confirming a two-process model of time perception operating within a 2-3 second time window.

Durations in the several seconds' range are cognitively accessible during active timing. Functional neuroimaging studies suggest the engagement of the basal ganglia (BG) and supplementary motor area (SMA). However, their functional relevance and arrangement remain unclear because non‐timing cognitive processes temporally coincide with the active timing. To examine the potential contamination by parallel processes, we introduced a sensory control and a motor control to the duration‐reproduction task. By comparing their hemodynamic functions, we decomposed the neural activities in multiple brain loci linked to different cognitive processes. Our results show a dissociation of two cortical neural circuits: the SMA for both active timing and motor preparation, followed by a prefrontal–parietal circuit related to duration working memory. We argue that these cortical processes represent duration as the content but at different levels of abstraction, while the subcortical structures, including the BG and thalamus, provide the logistic basis of timing by coordinating the temporal framework across brain structures.

The study investigates whether participants can establish multiple temporal references in a temporal reproduction task. The results show that participants can learn and maintain two references for the overlapping intervals with the short distribution being overestimated towards the long one.

Previous study indicates that there are two distinct behavioral patterns in the sensory‐motor synchronization task with short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA; 2–3 s) or long SOA (beyond 4 s). However, the underlying neural indicators and mechanisms have not been elucidated. The present study applied magnetoencephalography (MEG) technology to examine the functional role of several oscillations (beta, gamma, and mu) in sensorimotor synchronization with different SOAs to identify a reliable neural indicator. During MEG recording, participants underwent a listening task without motor response, a sound‐motor synchronization task, and a motor‐only continuation task. These tasks were used to explore whether and how the activity of oscillations changes across different behavioral patterns with different tempos. Results showed that during both the listening and the synchronization task, the beta oscillation changes with the tempo. Moreover, the event‐related synchronization of beta oscillations was significantly correlated with motor timing during synchronization. In contrast, mu activity only changes with the tempo in the synchronization task, while the gamma activity remains unchanged. In summary, the current study indicates that beta oscillation could be an indicator of behavioral patterns between fast tempo and slow tempo in sensorimotor synchronization. Also, it is likely to be the potential mechanism of maintaining rhythmic continuous movements with short SOA, which is embedded within the 3 s time window.

The present study demonstrates that spatial attention modulates temporal order perception differently in the perifoveal and peripheral regions, with a more pronounced effect in the left peripheral visual field, suggesting a dissociation in attentional systems for event timing at the sub‐second level.

Subjective time dilation is an effect discovered using the oddball paradigm, where expanding visual stimuli, but not shrinking ones, induce a prolongation of subjective temporal perception compared to static stimuli. This disparity is often seen as another demonstration of humans' evolved reaction to approaching threats, since visual expansion resembles approaching potential threats and warrants extra attention. In this study, we show that by manipulating the relative sizes of stimuli, both expanding and shrinking stimuli can induce prolongation of subjective time in an oddball paradigm. We propose an alternative explanation based on information theory, linking subjective temporal perception to entropy, an objective property of stimulus that is information uncertainty. Temporal function as a logistic function thus serves as the framework inside which content functions like information processing are able to operate coherently.

The use of visual representations of time is common in both research and daily life, with progress icons, such as bars and rings, being popular examples. Despite some studies investigating the advantage of different shapes, there has been no consistent result from questionnaires. This study aims to investigate this topic by using an objective temporal reproduction task to compare the potential difference between short and long waiting times, as evidence indicates that the temporal machinery could be different within and beyond 2–3 s. The study also explores the role of the percentage of progress icons. Two groups of participants first experienced a short (3 s) or long (15 s) duration with a dynamic progress icon, which varied by shape (bar vs. ring) and progress percentage (20% vs. 80%). Then they reproduced the duration with a button, seeing a neutral grey square on the screen. The results revealed that the reproduced durations of bars were significantly shorter than those of rings, but only for the long duration condition (15 s). Additionally, a larger progress percentage led to longer reproductions for both 3 s and 15 s. These findings suggest that the spatial configuration is significant when the waiting time is relatively long, supporting the hierarchical model of temporal perception. Overall, this study contributes to both industrial design and our understanding of the cognitive mechanism of temporal perception.