title: Neural foundations and functional specificity of number representations.
abstract: Number is a complex category, as with the word "number" we may refer to different entities. First, it is a perceptual property that characterizes any set of individual items, namely its cardinality. The ability to extract the (approximate) cardinality of sets is almost universal in the animal domain and present in humans since birth. In primates, posterior parietal cortex seems to be a crucial site for this ability, even if the degree of selectivity of numerical representations in parietal cortex reported to date appears much lower compared to that of other semantic categories in the ventral stream. Number can also be intended as a mathematical object, which we humans use to count, measure, and order: a (verbal or visual) symbol that stands for the cardinality of a set, the intensity of a continuous quantity or the position of an item on a list. Evidence points to a convergence towards parietal cortex for the semantic coding of numerical symbols and to the bilateral occipitotemporal cortex for the shape coding of Arabic digits and other number symbols.
authors.affiliation: Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento, Italy; Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, INSERM, Gif sur Yvette, France; NeuroSpin Center, DSV, I2BM, CEA, Gif sur Yvette, France; University of Paris 11, Orsay, France. Electronic address: manuela.piazza@unitn.it.
authors.forename: Manuela
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Piazza
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, INSERM, Gif sur Yvette, France; NeuroSpin Center, DSV, I2BM, CEA, Gif sur Yvette, France; University of Paris 11, Orsay, France.
authors.forename: Evelyn
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Eger
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004569:Electroencephalography; D006801:Humans; D008433:Mathematics; D059906:Neuroimaging; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Approximate number system; Arabic digits; Ensemble statistic; Neuro-functional specificity; Number; Number sense; Numerosity; Parietal cortex; Saliency maps; Ventral stream