Functional Imaging of Numerical Processing in Adults and 4-y-Old Children

By Jessica F. Cantlon, Elizabeth M. Brannon, Elizabeth Jeanne Carter, Kevin A. Pelphrey. PLoS Biology, 2006

605 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Adult humans, infants, pre-school children, and non-human animals appear to share a system of approximate numerical processing for non-symbolic stimuli such as arrays of dots or sequences of tones. Behavioral studies of adult humans implicate a link between these non-symbolic numerical abilities and symbolic numerical processing (e.g., similar distance effects in accuracy and reaction-time for arrays of dots and Arabic numerals). However, neuroimaging studies have remained inconclusive on the neural basis of this link. The intraparietal sulcus (IPS) is known to respond selectively to symbolic numerical stimuli such as Arabic numerals. Recent studies, however, have arrived at conflicting conclusions regarding the role of the IPS in processing non-symbolic, numerosity arrays in adulthood, and very little is known about the brain basis of numerical processing early in development. Addressing the question of whether there is an early-developing neural basis for abstract numerical processing is essential for understanding the cognitive origins of our uniquely human capacity for math and science. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at 4-Tesla and an event-related fMRI adaptation paradigm, we found that adults showed a greater IPS response to visual arrays that deviated from standard stimuli in their number of elements, than to stimuli that deviated in local element shape. These results support previous claims that there is a neurophysiological link between non-symbolic and symbolic numerical processing in adulthood. In parallel, we tested 4-y-old children with the same fMRI adaptation paradigm as adults to determine whether the neural locus of non-symbolic numerical activity in adults shows continuity in function over development. We found that the IPS responded to numerical deviants similarly in 4-y-old children and adults. To our knowledge, this is the first evidence that the neural locus of adult numerical cognition takes form early in development, prior to sophisticated symbolic numerical experience. More broadly, this is also, to our knowledge, the first cognitive fMRI study to test healthy children as young as 4 y, providing new insights into the neurophysiology of human cognitive development.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Education, Statistics and Probability

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/80bf88137bf584083d1883dd01780cc75be11872

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Citations in the corpus

Symbols and quantities in parietal cortex: elements of a mathematical theory of number representation and manipulation (2007, background): “Acquisition of symbolic numerals While several neuroimaging studies have observed nonsymbolic quantity representations in parietal cortex in young children (Temple and Posner, 1998; Cantlon et al., 2006), very few studies have examined the acquisition of number symbols.”
Cultural recycling of cortical maps. (2007, positive): “Number-related parietal activation, particularly in the right hemisphere, is already present in 4-year-old children as they attend to the numerosity of sets (Cantlon et al., 2006; Temple and Posner, 1998).”
Numerosity, Abstraction, and the Emergence of Symbolic Thinking (2012, background): “It is important to note that subitization is not synonymous with counting (i.e., counting requires ordinality or number sequencing; subitization does not), though subitization may serve as an important cognitive precursor to counting (e.g., Cantlon et al. 2006; Carey 2009).”
Computer-Assisted Intervention for Children with Low Numeracy Skills (2009, background): “In both adults and children there appear to be specific brain areas in the prefrontal cortex and in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) that are associated with this core number processing (Cantlon et al., 2006).”
Age-related Changes in the Activation of the Intraparietal Sulcus during Nonsymbolic Magnitude Processing: An Event-related Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study (2006, result): “It is important, however, to note that the study by Cantlon et al. (2006) did not require participants to attend to number or make any number-related responses, which could explain why the results differed from the present study.”
Arithmetic in the Child and Adult Brain (2015, background): “Converging evidence from studies of infants (Feigenson, Dehaene, & Spelke, 2004), preschool children (Cantlon et al., 2006) and adults (Ansari, 2008), as well as non-human primates (Cantlon & Brannon, 2006), indicates that the representation of approximate quantities is supported by the IPS in the d”
Disrupted Modularity and Local Connectivity of Brain Functional Networks in Childhood-Onset Schizophrenia (2010, positive): “We note that adult template images have previously been used as a basis for normalization of fMRI data on participants in similar and even younger age-ranges than our sample (Durston et al., 2003; Turkeltaub et al., 2003; Cantlon et al., 2006; Crone et al., 2006; Galvan et al., 2006).”
Extending mind, visuospatial integration, and the evolution of the parietal lobes in the human genus (2016, background): “…et al., 1998; Rushworth et al., 2001; Andersen and Buneo, 2002; Wardak et al., 2005; Freedman and Assad, 2006), although recently different kinds of integrative processes have been discussed, such as those associated with numbering (Cantlon et al., 2006; Ansari, 2008; Nieder and Dehaene, 2009).”
Effects of an Adaptive Game Intervention on Accessing Number Sense in Low-Socioeconomic-Status Kindergarten Children (2009, background): “It is for this reason that much work in numerical cognition is now focusing on non-symbolic measures (Barth et al., 2006; Cantlon et al., 2006; McCrink & Wynn, 2004; Piazza et al., 2007) and that the use of non-symbolic tests has been advocated as a more direct measure of number sense in children (W”
Interactive specialization: a domain-general framework for human functional brain development? (2011, positive): “While regions responsive to number may be activated from 4 years old or earlier (Cantlon et al., 2006), left fusiform regions that are selective to letters in adults are equally activated by numbers in 4–5-year old children (Cantlon et al., 2010).”
Low numeracy and dyscalculia: identification and intervention (2010, background): “Evidence for this has been provided by a comparative study of neural activations in children and adults, showing much more left lateralization in adults ( Cantlon, Brannon, Carter, and Pelphrey, 2006 ).”
Morphological Differences in the Parietal Lobes within the Human Genus (2010, background): “…as those related to computation: nonsymbolic and symbolic elements are linked by the integration at the intraparietal sulcus between repeated stimuli and the mental tools of the internal representations, leading to ordered coordination of numerical information (Ansari 2008; Cantlon et al. 2006).”
Intuitive numbers guide decisions (2008, background): “The number domain is a prime example where strong evidence points to a biologically determined, domainspecific representation of number and elementary arithmetic operations linked to the inferior parietal cortex, specifically the horizontal intra-parietal sulcus in both adults and children ( Cantlon”