Counting on neurons: the neurobiology of numerical competence

@article{Nieder2005CountingON,
  title={Counting on neurons: the neurobiology of numerical competence},
  author={Andreas Nieder},
  journal={Nature Reviews Neuroscience},
  year={2005},
  volume={6},
  pages={177-190}
}
  • A. Nieder
  • Published 1 March 2005
  • Biology, Psychology
  • Nature Reviews Neuroscience
Numbers are an integral part of our everyday life — we use them to quantify, rank and identify objects. The verbal number concept allows humans to develop superior mathematical and logic skills that define technologically advanced cultures. However, basic numerical competence is rooted in biological primitives that can be explored in animals, infants and human adults alike. We are now beginning to unravel its anatomical basis and neuronal mechanisms on many levels, down to its single neuron… 
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426 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
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Background Citations
246
Methods Citations
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Results Citations
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426 Citations

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  • A. Nieder
  • Biology, Psychology
    Nature Reviews Neuroscience
  • 2016
TLDR
Studying number neurons provides insights into how information is maintained in working memory and transformed in tasks that require rule-based decisions and provides a window into the neuronal mechanisms of high-level brain functions.
Representation of Numerical Information in the Brain
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Together, neural data on numerosity and serial order indicate that numerical quantity and rank order information are likely to share the same neural system, with the prefrontal cortex and the intra-parietal sulcus as key structures.
Coding of abstract quantity by ‘number neurons’ of the primate brain
  • A. Nieder
  • Biology, Psychology
    Journal of Comparative Physiology A
  • 2012
TLDR
These studies establish putative homologies between the monkey and human brain and demonstrate the suitability of nonhuman primates as model system to explore the neurobiological roots of the brain’s nonverbal quantification system, which may constitute the evolutionary foundation of all further, more elaborate numerical skills in humans.
Neuronal representation of number and proportion in the primate brain
TLDR
These findings suggest that the primate brain houses a phylogenetically old network for the representation of quantity that, during the course of human evolution, has been coopted to build the authors' remarkable sense of number.
Effects of development and enculturation on number representation in the brain
  • D. Ansari
  • Psychology, Biology
    Nature Reviews Neuroscience
  • 2008
TLDR
This Review provides an evaluation of the contention that cultural number symbols acquire their meaning by being mapped onto non-symbolic representations of numerical magnitude and proposes hypotheses to guide investigations into the neural mechanisms that constrain the acquisition of cultural representations of numeric magnitude.
Semantic Associations between Signs and Numerical Categories in the Prefrontal Cortex
TLDR
A cardinal role of the prefrontal cortex is suggested in establishing semantic associations between signs and abstract categories, a cognitive precursor that may ultimately give rise to symbolic thinking in linguistic humans.
Numerical Representation in the Parietal Lobes :
  • Biology, Psychology
  • 2009
TLDR
It is argued that numerical representation is primarily non-abstract and is supported by different neuronal populations residing in the parietal cortex and also to the field of cognitive neuroscience in general.
Prefrontal cortex and the evolution of symbolic reference
  • A. Nieder
  • Biology, Psychology
    Current Opinion in Neurobiology
  • 2009
Interactions between number and space in parietal cortex
TLDR
It is proposed that these numerical–spatial interactions arise from common parietal circuits for attention to external space and internal representations of numbers.
Temporal and Spatial Enumeration Processes in the Primate Parietal Cortex
TLDR
It is found that temporal and spatial enumeration processes engaged different populations of neurons in the intraparietal sulcus of behaving monkeys, suggesting distinct neural processing stages for different numerical formats, but also a final convergence of the segregated information to form most abstract quantity representations.
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