ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to discuss some of the conceptual limits to the imaging of human timing and explores ideas about what the studies may be expected to achieve. The reference memory store in which the previous intervals are recorded might also seem easy to image, as it would accumulate traces of the previous intervals, changing with experience of the target interval. The most basic measures afforded by functional imaging studies are the changes in the activity of neural populations from one moment to another. The wealth of evidence suggesting that imagined movement or mental rehearsal does activate the motor system compounds this difficulty because implicit use of motor systems to measure time, even without active movement, could cause neural activity. For much of the imaging literature, the sensory input systems are treated as items of secondary interest. A naive viewpoint might therefore be that the bulk of the imaging data produced so far reflects the activation of this accumulator circuit.
