  Visual recognition takes a small fraction of a second and relies on the
cascade of signals along the ventral visual stream. Given the rapid path
through multiple processing steps between photoreceptors and higher visual
areas, information must progress from stage to stage very quickly. This rapid
progression of information suggests that fine temporal details of the neural
response may be important to the how the brain encodes visual signals. We
investigated how changes in the relative timing of incoming visual stimulation
affect the representation of object information by recording intracranial field
potentials along the human ventral visual stream while subjects recognized
objects whose parts were presented with varying asynchrony. Visual responses
along the ventral stream were sensitive to timing differences between parts as
small as 17 ms. In particular, there was a strong dependency on the temporal
order of stimulus presentation, even at short asynchronies. This sensitivity to
the order of stimulus presentation provides evidence that the brain may use
differences in relative timing as a means of representing information.
