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What is an (abstract) neural representation of quantity?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2009

Manuela Piazza
Affiliation:
Center for Mind Brain Sciences, University of Trento, 38068 Rovereto (TN)Italy. Manuela.piazza@unitn.it
Veronique Izard
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138. Veronique.izard@polytechnique.org

Abstract

We argue that Cohen Kadosh & Walsh's (CK&W's) definitions of neural coding and of abstract representations are overly shallow, influenced by classical cognitive psychology views of modularity and seriality of information processing, and incompatible with the current knowledge on principles of neural coding. As they stand, the proposed dichotomies are not very useful heuristic tools to guide our research towards a better understanding of the neural computations underlying the processing of numerical quantity in the parietal cortex.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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