Time estimation in patients with right or left medial-temporal lobe resection

Patients with either left or right antero-medial-temporal lobe (MTL) resection were investigated as to their ability to reproduce and produce three durations (5, 14, or 38 s) in three conditions (silence, counting, articulatory suppression). The results showed that patients with unilateral MTL lesions did not differ from controls when they had to encode the duration of a visual stimulus in order to reproduce it. By contrast, patients with right MTL lesions underestimated all three durations, compared with controls and with patients with left MTL resection, when they had to produce durations given in chronometric units. This finding suggests that the right MTL retains long-term representations of the conventional units necessary to the accurate production of durations.