Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T08:50:12.581Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Number faculty is alive and kicking: On number discriminations and number neurons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2017

Andreas Nieder
Andreas Nieder*
Affiliation:
Animal Physiology Unit, Institute of Neurobiology, University of Tübingen, 72076 Tübingen, [email protected]://homepages.uni-tuebingen.de/andreas.nieder/
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Leibovich et al. advocate for a single “sense of magnitude” to which a dedicated faculty for number could allegedly be reduced. This conclusion is unjustified as the authors adopt an unnecessarily narrow definition of “number sense,” neglect studies that demonstrate non-symbolic numerosity representation, and furthermore ignore abstract number representations in the brain.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 40 , 2017 , e181
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anobile, G., Cicchini, G. M. & Burr, D. C. (2016c) Number as a primary perceptual attribute: A review. Perception 45 (1–2):5–31. doi: 10.1177/0301006615602599.Google Scholar
Barth, H., La Mont, K., Lipton, J. & Spelke, E. S. (2005) Abstract number and arithmetic in preschool children. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102(39):14116–21. Available at: http://www.pnas.org/content/102/39/14116.short.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brannon, E. M. & Terrace, H. S. (1998) Ordering of the numerosities 1 to 9 by monkeys. Science 282(5389):746–49.Google Scholar
Burr, D. & Ross, J. (2008) A visual sense of number. Current Biology 18(6):425–28. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2008.02.052.Google Scholar
Castelli, F., Glaser, D. E. & Butterworth, B. (2006) Discrete and analogue quantity processing in the parietal lobe: A functional MRI study. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 103(12):4693–98. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0600444103.Google Scholar
Cicchini, G. M., Anobile, G. & Burr, D. C. (2016) Spontaneous perception of numerosity in humans. Nature Communications 7:12536. doi: 10.1038/ncomms12536.Google Scholar
Dantzig, T. (1930) Number: The language of science. The Free Press.Google Scholar
Diester, I. & Nieder, A. (2007) Semantic associations between signs and numerical categories in the prefrontal cortex. PLoS Biology 5(11):e294.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eiselt, A. K. & Nieder, A. (2016) Single-cell coding of sensory, spatial and numerical magnitudes in primate prefrontal, premotor and cingulate motor cortices. Experimental Brain Research 234:241–54.Google Scholar
Jordan, K. E., Maclean, E. L. & Brannon, E. M. (2008a) Monkeys match and tally quantities across senses. Cognition 108:617–25.Google Scholar
Nieder, A. (2012) Supramodal numerosity selectivity of neurons in primate prefrontal and posterior parietal cortices. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109:11860–65.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nieder, A. (2016) The neuronal code for number. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 17:366–82.Google Scholar
Nieder, A., Diester, I. & Tudusciuc, O. (2006) Temporal and spatial enumeration processes in the primate parietal cortex. Science 313:1431–35.Google Scholar
Nieder, A., Freedman, D. J. & Miller, E. K. (2002) Representation of the quantity of visual items in the primate prefrontal cortex. Science 297:1708–11.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pinel, P., Piazza, M., Le Bihan, D. & Dehaene, S. (2004) Distributed and overlapping cerebral representations of number, size, and luminance during comparative judgments. Neuron 41(6):983–93. doi: 10.1016/S0896-6273(04)00107-2.Google Scholar
Ramirez-Cardenas, A., Moskaleva, M. & Nieder, A. (2016) Neuronal representation of numerosity zero in the primate parieto-frontal number network. Current Biology 26:1285–94.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tudusciuc, O. & Nieder, A. (2009) Contributions of primate prefrontal and posterior parietal cortices to length and numerosity representation. Journal of Neurophysiology 101:2984–94.Google Scholar
Viswanathan, P. & Nieder, A. (2013) Neuronal correlates of a visual “sense of number” in primate parietal and prefrontal cortices. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 110(27):11187–92. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1308141110.Google Scholar
Viswanathan, P. & Nieder, A. (2015) Differential impact of behavioral relevance on quantity coding in primate frontal and parietal neurons. Current Biology 25:1259–69.Google Scholar