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Updated: Mar 1, 2026
09:54
Morphological and Functional Evaluation of Ribbon Synapses at Specific Frequency Regions of the Mouse Cochlea
Published on: May 10, 2019
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Population coding for visual and auditory quantity in human numerotopic maps
Garam Jeong1, Joram Soch2, Robert Trampel3
1Research Group Learning in Early Childhood, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.
Communications Biology
|February 27, 2026
Summary
Scientists found a universal coding scheme for visual and auditory quantity processing in the human brain. This discovery reveals how the brain processes numerical information across different senses, aiding survival.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Science
- Sensory Processing
Background:
- Neural populations extract quantitative information across senses for survival.
- Understanding cross-sensory quantity encoding is limited.
Purpose of the Study:
- Identify an overarching coding scheme for visual and auditory numerosity in humans.
- Investigate the neural basis of multisensory numerical information processing.
Main Methods:
- Utilized high-field functional magnetic resonance imaging (7 Tesla) in humans.
- Employed a neurobiologically plausible model informed by electrophysiological data.
Main Results:
- Discovered hemodynamic responses showing logarithmic Gaussian tuning to numerosity in both visual and auditory domains.
- Identified topographically organized numerotopic maps for both visual and auditory quantity.
- Located visual maps in association cortices and auditory maps in superior temporal and premotor cortices.
Conclusions:
- The human brain employs a shared coding scheme for visual and auditory numerosity.
- This finding illuminates the multisensory foundations of numerical processing.
- Opens new research directions for cross-species, cross-modal quantity detection.
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