Timing of human cortical functions during cognition: role of MEG

Understanding of sensory and cognitive brain processes requires information about activation timing within and between different brain sites. Such dat a can be obtained by magnetoencephalography (MEG) that tracks cortical acti vation sequences with a millisecond temporal accuracy. MEG is gaining a wel l-established role in human neuroscience, complementing with its excellent temporal resolution the spatially more focused brain imaging methods. As ex amples of MEG's role in cognitive neuroscience, we discuss time windows rel ated to cortical processing of sensory and multisensory stimuli, effects of the subject's own voice on the activity of their auditory cortex, timing o f brain activation in reading, and cortical dynamics of the human mirror-ne uron system activated when the subject views another person's movements.