Deconstructing Events: The Neural Bases for Space, Time, and Causality

摘要

Space, time, and causality provide a natural structure fornorganizing our experience. These abstract categories allow usnto think relationally in the most basic sense; understanding simplenevents requires one to represent the spatial relations amongnobjects, the relative durations of actions or movements, and thenlinks between causes and effects. The present fMRI study investigatesnthe extent to which the brain distinguishes betweennthese fundamental conceptual domains. Participants performedna 1-back task with three conditions of interest (space, time,nand causality). Each condition required comparing relationsnbetween events in a simple verbal narrative. Depending onnthe condition, participants were instructed to either attend tonthe spatial, temporal, or causal characteristics of events, but betweennparticipants each particular event relation appeared innall three conditions. Contrasts compared neural activity duringneach condition against the remaining two and revealed hownthinking about events is deconstructed neurally. Space trialsnrecruited neural areas traditionally associated with visuospatialnprocessing, primarily bilateral frontal and occipitoparietal networks.nCausality trials activated areas previously found to underliencausal thinking and thematic role assignment, such as leftnmedial frontal and left middle temporal gyri, respectively. Causalityntrials also produced activations in SMA, caudate, and cerebellum;ncortical and subcortical regions associated with thenperception of time at different timescales. The time contrast,nhowever, produced no significant effects. This pattern, indicatingnnegative results for time trials but positive effects for causalityntrials in areas important for time perception, motivatednadditional overlap analyses to further probe relations betweenndomains. The results of these analyses suggest a closer correspondencenbetween time and causality than between time andnspace.