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A neural basis for the visual sense of number and its development: A steady-state visual evoked potential study in children and adults

While recent studies in adults have demonstrated the existence of a neural mechanism for a visual sense of number, little is known about its development and whether such a mechanism exists at young ages. In the current study, I introduce a novel steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) technique...

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Autor principal: Park, Joonkoo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6969086/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28342780
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2017.02.011
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author Park, Joonkoo
author_facet Park, Joonkoo
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description While recent studies in adults have demonstrated the existence of a neural mechanism for a visual sense of number, little is known about its development and whether such a mechanism exists at young ages. In the current study, I introduce a novel steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) technique to objectively quantify early visual cortical sensitivity to numerical and non-numerical magnitudes of a dot array. I then examine this neural sensitivity to numerical magnitude in children between three and ten years of age and in college students. Children overall exhibit strong SSVEP sensitivity to numerical magnitude in the right occipital sites with negligible SSVEP sensitivity to non-numerical magnitudes, the pattern similar to what is observed in adults. However, a closer examination of age differences reveals that this selective neural sensitivity to numerical magnitude, which is close to absent in three-year-olds, increases steadily as a function of age, while there is virtually no neural sensitivity to other non-numerical magnitudes across these ages. These results demonstrate the emergence of a neural mechanism underlying direct perception of numerosity across early and middle childhood and provide a potential neural mechanistic explanation for the development of humans’ primitive, non-verbal ability to comprehend number.
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spelling pubmed-69690862020-01-21 A neural basis for the visual sense of number and its development: A steady-state visual evoked potential study in children and adults Park, Joonkoo Dev Cogn Neurosci Special Section on The Development of the Mathematical Brain; Edited by Daniel Ansari and Daniel C. Hyde While recent studies in adults have demonstrated the existence of a neural mechanism for a visual sense of number, little is known about its development and whether such a mechanism exists at young ages. In the current study, I introduce a novel steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) technique to objectively quantify early visual cortical sensitivity to numerical and non-numerical magnitudes of a dot array. I then examine this neural sensitivity to numerical magnitude in children between three and ten years of age and in college students. Children overall exhibit strong SSVEP sensitivity to numerical magnitude in the right occipital sites with negligible SSVEP sensitivity to non-numerical magnitudes, the pattern similar to what is observed in adults. However, a closer examination of age differences reveals that this selective neural sensitivity to numerical magnitude, which is close to absent in three-year-olds, increases steadily as a function of age, while there is virtually no neural sensitivity to other non-numerical magnitudes across these ages. These results demonstrate the emergence of a neural mechanism underlying direct perception of numerosity across early and middle childhood and provide a potential neural mechanistic explanation for the development of humans’ primitive, non-verbal ability to comprehend number. Elsevier 2017-03-02 /pmc/articles/PMC6969086/ /pubmed/28342780 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2017.02.011 Text en © 2017 The Author http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Special Section on The Development of the Mathematical Brain; Edited by Daniel Ansari and Daniel C. Hyde
Park, Joonkoo
A neural basis for the visual sense of number and its development: A steady-state visual evoked potential study in children and adults
title A neural basis for the visual sense of number and its development: A steady-state visual evoked potential study in children and adults
title_full A neural basis for the visual sense of number and its development: A steady-state visual evoked potential study in children and adults
title_fullStr A neural basis for the visual sense of number and its development: A steady-state visual evoked potential study in children and adults
title_full_unstemmed A neural basis for the visual sense of number and its development: A steady-state visual evoked potential study in children and adults
title_short A neural basis for the visual sense of number and its development: A steady-state visual evoked potential study in children and adults
title_sort neural basis for the visual sense of number and its development: a steady-state visual evoked potential study in children and adults
topic Special Section on The Development of the Mathematical Brain; Edited by Daniel Ansari and Daniel C. Hyde
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6969086/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28342780
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2017.02.011
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