Time perception in spatial neglect: a distorted representation?

Abstract

Objective: It has been proposed that time, space, and numbers share the same metrics and cortical network, the right parietal cortex. Several recent investigations have demonstrated that the mental number line representation is distorted in neglect patients. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between time and spatial configuration in neglect patients.

Method: Fourteen right-brain damaged patients (six with neglect and eight without neglect), as well as eight age-matched healthy controls, performed a time discrimination task. A standard tone (short: 700 ms and long: 1,700 ms) had to be confronted in duration to a test tone. Test tone differed of 100, 200, and 300 ms respect to the standard tone duration.

Results: Neglect patients performed significantly worse than patients without neglect and healthy controls, irrespective of the duration of the standard tone.

Conclusion: These results support the hypothesis that mental representations of space and time both share, to some extent, a common cortical network. Besides, spatial neglect seems to distort the time representation, inducing an overestimation of time durations.