Qiyuan Zeng, a PhD student since 2023, is interested in studying the emergence of consciousness in physical systems, particularly during early development. He investigates how event segmentation—the brain’s ability to parse continuous experiences into discrete events—distorts subjective time perception, a key marker of stimuli accessing consciousness. By leveraging neural frequency tagging (NFT) in no-report paradigms and identifying markers of time distortion using MEG as well as eye tracking in adults, Qiyuan examines the neural basis of temporal experience. Looking ahead, he aims to test the emergence and developmental trajectories of these neural markers in infants, thereby advancing our understanding surrounding consciousness in early development.