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Number forms in the brain.

Joey Tang1, Jamie Ward, Brian Butterworth

  • 1University College London, UK. joeytang@hku.hk

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
|March 19, 2008
PubMed
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Number-form synesthesia involves mental number lines. Neuroimaging reveals distinct brain activity for number order versus magnitude, suggesting number forms are primarily ordinal. This deepens our understanding of number processing in the brain.

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Synesthesia Research

Background:

  • Number-form synesthesia (NF) involves mental visualizations of number sequences, often as spatial layouts.
  • Galton's number forms offer a unique window into the relationship between numerical cognition and spatial representation.
  • Previous research on synesthesia primarily focused on grapheme-color or word-color associations.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To conduct the first neuroimaging study on number-form synesthesia.
  • To investigate the neural basis of number-form synesthesia by comparing synesthetes with matched controls.
  • To differentiate the neural processing of cardinal (magnitude) versus ordinal (order) number information in individuals with NFs.

Main Methods:

  • Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was employed to scan 10 individuals with left-to-right number forms and 10 matched controls.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Participants completed two tasks: one focusing on number magnitude (cardinal) and another on number order (ordinal).
  • Brain activation patterns were compared between synesthetes and controls during these tasks.

    • Main Results:

    • No significant differences in brain activation were observed between groups during the number magnitude task.
    • Synesthetes exhibited additional activation in the bilateral posterior intraparietal sulci during the number order task.
    • These findings suggest that number forms are fundamentally related to the ordinal processing of numbers.

    Conclusions:

    • Neural circuits for processing ordinal and cardinal numbers are distinct yet partially overlapping.
    • A core region in the anterior intraparietal sulcus appears to autonomously process cardinal number meaning, independent of task demands.
    • This study extends synesthesia research beyond sensory associations to explore numerical cognition and spatial representation.