Human brain representations of internally generated outcomes of approximate calculation revealed by ultra-high-field brain imaging.

Journal

Nature communications

ISSN: 2041-1723

Titre abrégé: Nat Commun

Pays: England

ID NLM: 101528555

Informations de publication

Date de publication:
17 Jan 2024

Historique:

received: 02 03 2023

accepted: 03 01 2024

medline: 18 1 2024

pubmed: 18 1 2024

entrez: 17 1 2024

Statut: epublish

Résumé

Much of human culture's advanced technology owes its existence to the ability to mentally manipulate quantities. Neuroscience has described the brain regions overall recruited by numerical tasks and the neuronal codes representing individual quantities during perceptual tasks. Nevertheless, it remains unknown how quantity representations are combined or transformed during mental computations and how specific quantities are coded in the brain when generated as the result of internal computations rather than evoked by a stimulus. Here, we imaged the brains of adult human subjects at 7 Tesla during an approximate calculation task designed to disentangle in- and outputs of the computation from the operation itself. While physically presented sample numerosities were distinguished in activity patterns along the dorsal visual pathway and within frontal and occipito-temporal regions, a representation of the internally generated result was most prominently detected in higher order regions such as angular gyrus and lateral prefrontal cortex. Behavioral precision in the task was related to cross-decoding performance between sample and result representations in medial IPS regions. This suggests the transformation of sample into result may be carried out within dorsal stream sensory-motor integration regions, and resulting outputs maintained for task purposes in higher-level regions in a format possibly detached from sensory-evoked inputs.

Identifiants

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-44810-5 PMID: 38233387

pubmed: 38233387

doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-44810-5

pii: 10.1038/s41467-024-44810-5

doi:

Types de publication

Journal Article

Langues

eng

Sous-ensembles de citation

Pagination

572

Subventions

Organisme : Agence Nationale de la Recherche (French National Research Agency)

ID : ANR-14-CE13- 0020-01

Informations de copyright

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