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The Mechanical Representation of Temporal Delays
Raz Leib1, Amir Karniel2, Ferdinando A Mussa-Ivaldi3,4
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel. leibra@post.bgu.ac.il.
Scientific Reports
|August 11, 2017
Summary
The brain likely approximates sensory delays rather than explicitly calculating them. This approximation helps integrate multisensory information arriving at different times, improving our perception of simultaneous events.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Science
- Robotics
Background:
- Sensory information from a single event reaches the brain via different pathways at different times.
- The brain must process these temporal discrepancies to perceive events as simultaneous.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether the brain explicitly estimates time delays in sensory information or uses an approximation.
- To determine the neural mechanism for integrating multisensory information with temporal disparities.
Main Methods:
- A tracking task involving manipulated visual and proprioceptive feedback with time delays.
- Analysis of tracking errors, grip forces, and learning curves under different delay conditions.
Main Results:
- Behavioral data (tracking errors, grip forces, learning) align with predictions of an approximation for delay representation.
- Findings refute the hypothesis of an explicit delayed-state representation for sensory integration.
Conclusions:
- The brain appears to approximate temporal delays rather than explicitly calculating them for sensory integration.
- This approximation mechanism is crucial for realigning sensory flows and perceiving simultaneous multisensory events.
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