Parametric Representation of Tactile Numerosity in Working Memory

Uluç, Işıl; Velenosi, Lisa Alexandria; Schmidt, Timo Torsten; Blankenburg, Felix

doi:10.1523/eneuro.0090-19.2019

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…A candidate region for this function is the premotor cortex (PMC) which is routinely found to be activated during WM (Carpenter, Baud-Bovy, Georgopoulos, & Pellizzer, 2018;Marvel, Morgan, & Kronemer, 2019;Rottschy et al, 2012;Simon et al, 2002) and is involved in prospective attention during sequence processing (Schubotz, 2004). Recently, Fegen, Buchsbaum, and D'Esposito (2015) reported that activation in the PMC was modulated by WM load and rehearsal rate in a verbal WM study and we have repeatedly demonstrated the involvement of the PMC in tactile WM (Schmidt et al, 2017;Uluç, Velenosi, Schmidt, & Blankenburg, 2020;Velenosi, Wu, Schmidt, & Blankenburg, 2020;Wu et al, 2018). Together, these reports motivate further investigation into the functional contribution of the PMC to the rehearsal process, in particular its involvement in the reactivation of content-specific codes.…”

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confidence: 66%

Rehearsal of tactile working memory: Premotor cortex recruits two dissociable neuronal content representations

Schmidt

Schröder

Reinhardt

et al. 2020

Human Brain Mapping

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Recent working memory (WM) research has focused on identifying brain regions that retain different types of mental content. Only few neuroimaging studies have explored the mechanism of attention-based refreshing, which is a type of rehearsal and is thought to implement the dynamic components of WM allowing for update of WM contents. Here, we took advantage of the distinct coding properties of the superior parietal lobe (SPL), which retains spatial layout information, and the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), which retains frequency information of vibrotactile stimuli during tactile WM. In an fMRI delayed match-to-sample task, participants had to internally rehearse sequences of spatial layouts or vibratory frequencies. Our results replicate the dissociation of SPL and IFG for the retention of layout and frequency information in terms of activation differences between conditions. Additionally, we found strong premotor cortex (PMC) activation during rehearsal of either stimulus type. To explore interactions between these regions we used dynamic causal modeling and found that activation within the network was best explained by a model that allows the PMC to drive activity in the SPL and IFG during rehearsal. This effect was content-specific, meaning that the PMC showed stronger influence on the SPL during pattern rehearsal and stronger influence on the IFG during frequency rehearsal. In line with previously established PMC contributions to sequence processing, our results suggest that it acts as a content-independent area that flexibly recruits content-specific regions to bring a WM item into the focus of attention during the rehearsal of tactile stimulus sequences.

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supporting

confidence: 66%

Rehearsal of tactile working memory: Premotor cortex recruits two dissociable neuronal content representations

Schmidt

Schröder

Reinhardt

et al. 2020

Human Brain Mapping

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“…To test that the participants had not counted the number of all dots in the applied stimuli, we performed a number naming test after the participants left the MRI scanner. To assess the highest numerosity in our stimulus set for which participants were able to name the exact number of dots, we used a modified version of a number naming test applied in Spitzer, Fleck, and Blankenburg (2014) and Uluç, Velenosi, Schmidt, and Blankenburg (2020). In each trial participants were presented with one stimulus, for 700 ms as applied in the DMTS task, and had to report the exact number of dots by typing it in on a keyboard.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Representation of visual numerosity information during working memory in humans: An fMRI decoding study

Pennock

Schmidt

Zorbek

et al. 2021

Human Brain Mapping

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Both animal and human studies on numerosity have shown the importance of the parietal cortex for numerosity processing. However, most studies have focused on the perceptual processing of numerosity. Still, it is unclear how and where numerosity information is coded when this information is retained during a working memory delay phase. Such temporal storage could be realized by the same structures as perceptual processes, or be transformed to a more abstract representation, potentially involving prefrontal regions. FMRI decoding studies allow the identification of brain areas that exhibit multi‐voxel activation patterns specific to the content of working memory. Here, we used an assumption‐free searchlight‐decoding approach to test where numerosity‐specific codes can be found during a 12 s retention period. Participants (n = 24) performed a retro‐cue delayed match‐to‐sample task, in which numerosity information was presented as visual dot arrays. We found mnemonic numerosity‐specific activation in the right lateral portion of the intraparietal sulcus; an area well‐known for perceptual processing of numerosity. The applied retro‐cue design dissociated working memory delay activity from perceptual processes and showed that the intraparietal sulcus also maintained working memory representation independent of perception.

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“…Overall, given the role in sensorimotor integration and action guidance played by these areas, it is likely that they are implicated in the behavioral interactions between numerosity and action. Together with the prefrontal cortex, implicated in the maintenance of working memory of supramodal (visual, auditory, and tactile) numerosity information [44,45], and with the mediotemporal regions containing numerosity selective neurons [27], these parietal areas may constitute the neural substrate of the proposed sensorimotor number system in humans. Although these hypotheses are largely speculative, the anatomical proximity of areas recruited for numerosity and action processing could favor their interaction, as has been proposed for numerosity and size processing [46].…”

Section: Numerosity and Action In The Human Brainmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Sensorimotor Numerosity System

Anobile

Arrighi

Castaldi

et al. 2021

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

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Incoming sensory input provides information for the planning and execution of actions, which yield motor outcomes that are themselves sensory inputs. One dimension where action and perception strongly interact is numerosity perception. Many non-human animals can estimate approximately the number of external elements as well as their own actions, and neurons have been identified that respond to both. Recent psychophysical adaptation studies on humans also provide evidence for neural mechanisms responding to both the number of externally generated events and self-produced actions. Here we advance the idea that these strong connections may arise from dedicated sensorimotor mechanisms in the brain, part of a more generalized system interfacing action with the processing of other quantitative magnitudes such as space and time. A Sensorimotor Numerosity System Early physiological studies suggested that the cerebral cortex is organized in many areas, each functionally specialized to analyze different features of the perceptual environment [1,2]. Recent work, however, is beginning to show very strong interactions between different perceptual features, pointing to shared associative mechanisms. Perhaps the most prominent proposal is the A Theory Of Magnitude (ATOM) model [3], positing that the human parietal cortex processes jointly quantitative information about space, time, and number to optimize action planning and execution [3,4]. This theory has spawned multiple studies investigating how the perception of space, time, and number relies on shared mechanisms, with less attention dedicated to how perceptual information combines with action programming and execution. Here we propose that, for the perception of number, or numerosity (see Glossary), there exists a common neural system subserving both action and perception: a sensorimotor numerosity system, tuned to numerosity signals from both perception and action planning and execution. This proposal is supported by a range of studies suggesting that mechanisms processing the numerosity of externally generated events (regardless of sensory modality or presentation format) may also process internally generated events, such as goal-directed motor routines. We also review evidence suggesting that a sensorimotor system of this type may process quantitative information of non-numerical dimensions such as space and time. Numerosity Estimation The number of items is represented in humans by two distinct processes: a cultural and language-dependent system that encodes precisely the cardinality of elements; and a more primitive system shared with a variety of non-human species termed the approximate number system (ANS), which encodes quantity (or numerosity) in an approximate, non-symbolic manner [5,6]. Numerosity perception differs from both symbolic number representation (digits) and serial counting, in that it is rapid, parallel, and approximate. Numerosity estimation errors scale proportionally to physical numerosity, following Weber's law, at least over a limited range [7,8]...

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Parametric Representation of Tactile Numerosity in Working Memory

Cited by 8 publications

References 68 publications

Rehearsal of tactile working memory: Premotor cortex recruits two dissociable neuronal content representations

Rehearsal of tactile working memory: Premotor cortex recruits two dissociable neuronal content representations

Representation of visual numerosity information during working memory in humans: An fMRI decoding study

A Sensorimotor Numerosity System

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