Cortical activity linked to clocking in deaf adults: insights fNIRS with static and animated stimuli presentation

Authors

Laurent, S., Paire-Ficout, L., Boucheix, J.M., Argon, S., Hidalgo-Muñoz, A.R.

Year

2021

Title

Cortical activity linked to clocking in deaf adults: insights fNIRS with static and animated stimuli presentation

Journal / book / conference

Brain Sciences

Abstract

The question of the possible impact of deafness on temporal processing remains unanswered. Different findings, based on behavioral measures, show contradictory results. The goal of the pre-sent study is to analyze the brain activity underlying time estimation by using functional near in-frared spectroscopy (fNIRS) techniques, which allow examination of the frontal, central and oc-cipital cortical areas. A total of 37 participants (19 deaf) were recruited. The experimental task in-volved processing a road scene to determine whether the driver had time to safely execute a driv-ing task, such as overtaking. The road scenes were presented in animated format, or in sequences of 3 static images showing the beginning, mid-point, and end of a situation. The latter presentation required a clocking mechanism to estimate the time between the samples to evaluate vehicle speed. The results show greater frontal region activity in deaf people, which suggests that more cognitive effort is needed to process these scenes. The central region, which is involved in clocking according to several studies, is particularly activated by the static presentation in deaf people during the es-timation of time lapses. Exploration of the occipital region yielded no conclusive results. Our re-sults on the frontal and central regions encourage further study of the neural basis of time pro-cessing and its links with auditory capacity.

Issue

Volume

196

Pages

2-17

Keywords

Clocking; Deafness; Animation; fNIRS; Motion prediction; Temporal skill; Time estimation

relative links

https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11020196

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