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Science 8 September 2006:
Vol. 313. no. 5792, pp. 1431 - 1435
DOI: 10.1126/science.1130308
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Reports

Temporal and Spatial Enumeration Processes in the Primate Parietal Cortex

Andreas Nieder,* Ilka Diester, Oana Tudusciuc

Humans and animals can nonverbally enumerate visual items across time in a sequence or rapidly estimate the set size of spatial dot patterns at a single glance. We found that temporal and spatial enumeration processes engaged different populations of neurons in the intraparietal sulcus of behaving monkeys. Once the enumeration process was completed, however, another neuronal population represented the cardinality of a set irrespective of whether it had been cued in a spatial layout or across time. These data suggest distinct neural processing stages for different numerical formats, but also a final convergence of the segregated information to form most abstract quantity representations.

Primate NeuroCognition Laboratory, Hertie-Institute for Clinical Brain Research, Department of Cognitive Neurology, University of Tübingen, Otfried-Müller-Strasse 27, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: andreas.nieder{at}uni-tuebingen.de

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Neuronal population coding of continuous and discrete quantity in the primate posterior parietal cortex.
O. Tudusciuc and A. Nieder (2007)
PNAS 104, 14513-14518
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Processing of Abstract Ordinal Knowledge in the Horizontal Segment of the Intraparietal Sulcus.
W. Fias, J. Lammertyn, B. Caessens, and G. A. Orban (2007)
J. Neurosci. 27, 8952-8956
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
From Numerosity to Ordinal Rank: A Gain-Field Model of Serial Order Representation in Cortical Working Memory.
M. Botvinick and T. Watanabe (2007)
J. Neurosci. 27, 8636-8642
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
A Labeled-Line Code for Small and Large Numerosities in the Monkey Prefrontal Cortex.
A. Nieder and K. Merten (2007)
J. Neurosci. 27, 5986-5993
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »


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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)