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Shared Numerosity Representations Across Formats and Tasks Revealed with 7 Tesla fMRI: Decoding, Generalization, and
Eric D Wilkey1, Benjamin N Conrad2, Darren J Yeo2
1Brain and Mind Institute, Western University, London, Ontario N6A5B7, Canada.
Cerebral Cortex Communications
|July 23, 2021
Summary
This study found that the brain uses shared neural resources for processing both symbolic (digits) and nonsymbolic (dots) numbers. Differences in how the brain represents numbers are linked to math abilities.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Mathematical Cognition
- Neuroimaging
Background:
- The relationship between symbolic number representations (e.g., Arabic digits) and nonsymbolic numerical magnitudes (e.g., arrays of dots) is a key question in understanding numerical cognition.
- Mathematical skills throughout life are correlated with the ability to perceive and translate between different number formats.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether shared cortical activation patterns exist for symbolic and nonsymbolic number representations.
- To determine if neural responses to numbers predict math-related behaviors.
- To examine cross-format and cross-task generalization of neural activation patterns for numbers.
Main Methods:
- Utilized 7 Tesla functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to analyze brain activity in 39 healthy adults.
- Participants performed tasks involving discrimination and comparison of numerosities presented as dot arrays and Arabic digits.
- Examined neural activation patterns for generalization across number formats and tasks.
Main Results:
- Successful discrimination between numerosities (2, 4, 6, 8) showed overlapping activation patterns in the parietal lobes and left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) for both dot arrays and Arabic digits.
- Neural activation patterns generalized across tasks (identification vs. comparison) in the parietal lobes and IFG.
- While decoding performance did not correlate with external math tasks, generalization across formats and tasks showed a negative relationship with math achievement in the parietal lobes.
Conclusions:
- Numerosity-specific neural resources are shared across symbolic and nonsymbolic number formats.
- Individual differences in representational specificity within number formats and task contexts are associated with mathematical expertise.
- These findings suggest a neural basis for the link between number representation and mathematical ability.
Keywords:
math achievementmultivoxel pattern analysisnumber representationnumerical cognitionultra-high field fMRI
