Understanding the neural mechanisms associated with time to contact (TTC) estimation is an intriguing but challenging task. Despite the importance of TTC estimation in our everyday life, few studies have been conducted on it, and there are still a lot of unanswered questions and unknown aspects of this issue. In this study, we intended to address one of these unknown aspects. We used independent component analysis to systematically assess EEG substrates associated with TTC estimation using two experiments: (1) transversal motion experiment (when a moving object passes transversally in the frontoparallel plane from side to side in front of the observer), and (2) head-on motion experiment (when the observer is on the motion path of the moving object). We also studied the energy of all EEG sources in these two experiments. The results showed that brain regions involved in the transversal and head-on motion experiments were the same. However, the energy used by some brain regions in the head-on motion experiment, including some regions in left parietotemporal and left frontal lobes, was significantly higher than the energy used by those regions in the transversal motion experiment. These brain regions are dominantly associated with different kinds of visual attention, integration of visual information, and responding to visual motion.

中文翻译：

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接触估计期间的大脑活动：一项脑电图研究

了解与接触时间（TTC）估计相关的神经机制是一项有趣但具有挑战性的任务。尽管TTC估算在我们的日常生活中很重要，但对其进行的研究很少，并且仍然存在许多未解决的问题和此问题的未知方面。在这项研究中，我们打算解决这些未知方面之一。我们使用两个实验使用独立成分分析系统地评估与TTC估计相关的EEG底物：（1）横向运动实验（当运动物体在观察者前方从正面到另一面在正面平行平面中横向通过时），以及（2）正面运动实验（观察者在移动物体的运动路径上）。我们还在这两个实验中研究了所有EEG源的能量。结果表明，参与横向运动和正面运动实验的大脑区域是相同的。但是，正面运动实验中某些大脑区域（包括左顶颞叶和左额叶的某些区域）所使用的能量显着高于横向运动实验中这些区域所使用的能量。这些大脑区域主要与不同种类的视觉注意力，视觉信息的整合以及对视觉运动的响应有关。