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Motion along the mental number line reveals shared representations for numerosity and space.

ABSTRACT: Perception of number and space are tightly intertwined. It has been proposed that this is due to 'cortical recycling', where numerosity processing takes over circuits originally processing space. Do such 'recycled' circuits retain their original functionality? Here, we investigate interactions between numerosity and motion direction, two functions that both localize to parietal cortex. We describe a new phenomenon in which visual motion direction adapts nonsymbolic numerosity perception, giving rise to a repulsive aftereffect: motion to the left adapts small numbers, leading to overestimation of numerosity, while motion to the right adapts large numbers, resulting in underestimation. The reference frame of this effect is spatiotopic. Together with the tuning properties of the effect this suggests that motion direction-numerosity cross-adaptation may occur in a homolog of area LIP. 'Cortical recycling' thus expands but does not obliterate the functions originally performed by the recycled circuit, allowing for shared computations across domains.

SUBMITTER: Schwiedrzik CM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4764558 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Motion along the mental number line reveals shared representations for numerosity and space.

Schwiedrzik Caspar M CM Bernstein Benjamin B Melloni Lucia L

eLife 20160115

Perception of number and space are tightly intertwined. It has been proposed that this is due to 'cortical recycling', where numerosity processing takes over circuits originally processing space. Do such 'recycled' circuits retain their original functionality? Here, we investigate interactions between numerosity and motion direction, two functions that both localize to parietal cortex. We describe a new phenomenon in which visual motion direction adapts nonsymbolic numerosity perception, giving ...[more]

PMID: 26771249

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Project description:How do athletes represent actions from their sport? How are these representations structured and which knowledge is shared among experts in the same discipline? To address these questions, the event segmentation task was used. Experts in Taekwondo and novices indicated how they would subjectively split videos of Taekwondo form sequences into meaningful units. In previous research, this procedure was shown to unveil the structure of internal action representations and to be affected by sensorimotor knowledge. Without specific instructions on the grain size of segmentation, experts tended to integrate over longer episodes which resulted in a lower number of single units. Moreover, in accordance with studies in figure-skating and basketball, we expected higher agreement among experts on where to place segmentation marks, i.e., boundaries. In line with this hypothesis, significantly more overlap of boundaries was found within the expert group as compared to the control group. This was observed even though the interindividual differences in the selected grain size were huge and expertise had no systematic influence here. The absence of obvious goals or objects to structure Taekwondo forms underlines the importance of shared expert knowledge. Further, experts might have benefited from sensorimotor skills which allowed to simulate the observed actions more precisely. Both aspects may explain stronger agreement among experts even in unfamiliar Taekwondo forms. These interpretations are descriptively supported by the participants' statements about features which guided segmentation and by an overlap of the group's agreed boundaries with those of an experienced referee. The study shows that action segmentation can be used to provide insights into structure and content of action representations specific to experts. The mechanisms underlying shared knowledge among Taekwondoists and among experts in general are discussed on the background of current theoretic frameworks.

Dataset Information

Motion along the mental number line reveals shared representations for numerosity and space.

Publications

Motion along the mental number line reveals shared representations for numerosity and space.

Similar Datasets

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