Zorzi Marco, Priftis Konstantinos, Umiltà Carlo
Dipartimento di Psicologia Generale, Università di Padova, via Venezia 8, 35131 Padova, Italy.
Nature. 2002 May 9;417(6885):138-9. doi: 10.1038/417138a.
A popular metaphor for the representation of numbers in the brain is the 'mental number line', in which numbers are represented in a continuous, quantity-based analogical format. Here we show that patients with hemispatial neglect misplace the midpoint of a numerical interval when asked to bisect it (for example, stating that five is halfway between two and six), with an error pattern that closely resembles the bisection of physical lines. This new form of representational neglect constitutes strong evidence that the mental number line is more than simply a metaphor, and that its spatial nature renders it functionally isomorphic to physical lines.
大脑中数字表征的一个常用隐喻是“心理数字线”，其中数字以连续的、基于数量的类比形式呈现。我们在此表明，患有半侧空间忽视症的患者在被要求平分一个数字区间时（例如，声称5是2和6的中点），会错误放置该区间的中点，其错误模式与物理线段的平分非常相似。这种新形式的表征忽视构成了有力证据，表明心理数字线不仅仅是一个隐喻，而且其空间性质使其在功能上与物理线段同构。
