The nature-nurture debate regarding the origin of mental lines is fundamental for cognitive neuroscience. We examined natural-nurture effects on the mental time line, applying three different challenges to the directionality of time representation. We tested (1) patients with left-neglect and healthy participants, who are (2) left-to-right or right-to-left readers/writers, using (3) a lateralized left-right button press or a vocal mode in response to a mental time task, which asks participants to judge whether events have already happened in the past or are still to happen in the future. Using lateralized responses, a spatial-temporal association of response code (STEARC) effect was found, in concordance with the cultural effects. With vocal responses (no lateralization), past and future events showed similar results in both cultures. In patients with neglect, who have a deficit of spatial attention in processing the left side of space, future events were processed more slowly and less accurately than past events in both cultures. Our results indicate the existence of a “natural” disposition to map past and future events along a horizontal mental time line, which is affected by the different ways in which spatial representation of time is introduced.

Mental-orientation is suggested to play a key role in Alzheimer's disease, and consequently in early detection and follow-up of patients along the Alzheimer's disease spectrum. (PsycINFO Database Record

ObjectiveTo investigate whether a unified brain system manages one’s orientation to different places, events and people in one’s environment, and test the hypothesis that failure of this system (disorientation) is an early sign of Alzheimer’s disease (AD).MethodsA total of 46 participants (patients along the AD continuum and cognitively normal control subjects) were tested in a personalized, ecologically valid task of orientation relating to the participant’s own world in space, time and person under high–density electroencephalography. As a first step, we used evoked potential mapping to search for brain topography correlated with participants’ performance in orientating themselves to different places (space), events (time) and people (person) (Experiment 1). We then compared behavioral and electrophysiological changes in patients along the AD continuum (Experiment 2).ResultsWe identified a specific brain topography (“orientation map”) that was active for orientation in space, time and person in correlation to participants’ performance. Both performance and the map’s strength gradually decreased from health to mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and from MCI to AD. Another map, immediately preceding the orientation map, showed the longest activity in patients with MCI, significantly more than both patients with AD and cognitively normal controls.InterpretationOur findings demonstrate that the same brain topography accounts for orientation in the different domains of space, time and person and provide a nexus between deterioration in patients’ orientation with the aggravation of Alzheimer’s disease.