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A Large Lateral Craniotomy Procedure for Mesoscale Wide-field Optical Imaging of Brain Activity

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Published on: May 7, 2017

A supramodal number representation in human intraparietal cortex.

Evelyn Eger¹, Philipp Sterzer, Michael O Russ

¹Cognitive Neurology Unit, Department of Neurology, Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe University, Frankfurt a.M., Germany. eger@em.uni-frankfurt.de

|February 25, 2003

Summary

The brain automatically processes numbers in the intraparietal sulcus, regardless of task. This finding supports an innate "number sense" accessible across senses.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Neuroscience
Neuroimaging
Psychology

Background:

The triple-code theory suggests a
number sense
potentially located in the intraparietal cortex.
Prior functional neuroimaging studies struggled to isolate numerical magnitude representation from task-related activation in this region.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the neural basis of numerical processing.
To determine if numerical magnitude is represented independently of task demands.
To identify brain regions involved in automatic number access.

Main Methods:

An event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study was conducted.
Participants were presented with numbers, letters, and colors in both visual and auditory modalities.
Subjects performed a task requiring responses to target items within each category, without explicit magnitude processing.

Main Results:

Numbers, compared to letters and colors across modalities, consistently activated a bilateral region in the horizontal intraparietal sulcus.
This activation occurred even in the absence of explicit numerical magnitude processing.
The findings suggest a stimulus-driven, number-specific response in this brain area.

Conclusions:

The horizontal intraparietal sulcus is a likely substrate for a supramodal number representation.
This representation is automatically accessed upon presentation of numerical stimuli.
The findings support the concept of an innate
number sense
that may code magnitude information.