ABSTRACT
Mental chronometry is the attempt to decompose a perceptual, cognitive or motor task into a sequence of processing stages on the basis of measured response times. Electro- and magnetoencephalography (EEG, MEG) have been widely used in humans and appear to be particularly suited for the endeavor of relating sequences of neural events to sequences of cognitive stages that underlie the execution of a task. EEG and MEG recordings of event-related responses indeed reflect changes in neuronal activity on a time scale of milliseconds. Combination of fast and slow brain imaging methods is a promising approach for mapping the cortical activation underlying a cognitive task with high spatial and temporal detail. In functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI)-mental chronometry, event-related fMRI is used to trace both the topography and the sequence of cortical activation across brain regions during perceptual or cognitive tasks.
