2002/09/05 by Andreas Nieder, David J. Freedman, Earl K. Miller · 719 citations
Mathematics · Social Sciences · Neuroscience · Psychology · #Cognitive and developmental aspects of mathematical skills #Mathematics Education and Teaching Techniques #Visual perception and processing mechanisms #Categorization #Prefrontal cortex #Representation (politics) #Visual cortex #Primate #Visual field #Computer science #Cortex (anatomy) #Cognitive psychology #Psychology #Pattern recognition (psychology) #Mathematics #Artificial intelligence #Neuroscience #Cognition
paper · doi:10.1126/science.1072493
published in Science 297(5587), 1708-1711 (American Association for the Advancement of Science)
openalex publication_date 2002/09/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Deriving the quantity of items is an abstract form of categorization. To explore it, monkeys were trained to judge whether successive visual displays contained the same quantity of items. Many neurons in the lateral prefrontal cortex were tuned for quantity irrespective of the exact physical appearance of the displays. Their tuning curves formed overlapping filters, which may explain why behavioral discrimination improves with increasing numerical distance and why discrimination of two quantities with equal numerical distance worsens as their numerical size increases. A mechanism that extracts the quantity of visual field items could contribute to general numerical ability.