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Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation over the Parietal Cortex Improves Approximate Numerical Averaging.

Noam Brezis¹, Zohar Z Bronfman¹, Noa Jacoby²

¹Tel-Aviv University.

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

|June 18, 2016

Summary

The parietal cortex enhances numerical averaging precision. Excitatory stimulation of this brain region improved participants' ability to estimate the average of number sequences, suggesting a key role in cognitive processes.

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Cognitive Psychology
Computational Neuroscience

Background:

The parietal cortex is linked to numerical cognition and processing of magnitudes and numerals.
Its role in approximate numerical averaging, crucial for decision-making, remains unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

To causally investigate the parietal cortex's role in approximate numerical averaging.
To determine if stimulating the parietal cortex enhances numerical averaging precision.

Main Methods:

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) study with participants estimating averages of rapid number sequences.
Anodal (excitatory) tDCS applied to parietal or frontal regions versus sham stimulation.
Replication experiment to confirm specificity of the effect.

Main Results:

Participants showed above-chance accuracy in numerical averaging.
Parietal stimulation significantly increased the precision of numerical averaging compared to frontal stimulation or sham.
The observed enhancement was specific to numerical processing, not domain-general or attentional.

Conclusions:

The parietal cortex plays a causal role in approximate numerical averaging.
Parietal cortex stimulation enhances the precision of this cognitive process.
A neurocomputational model suggests population-coding in number-tuned detectors underlies this effect, with stimulation improving signal-to-noise ratio.