Izard Véronique, Dehaene-Lambertz Ghislaine, Dehaene Stanislas
INSERM, U562, Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, F-91191 Gif/Yvette, France.
PLoS Biol. 2008 Feb;6(2):e11. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0060011.
All humans, regardless of their culture and education, possess an intuitive understanding of number. Behavioural evidence suggests that numerical competence may be present early on in infancy. Here, we present brain-imaging evidence for distinct cerebral coding of number and object identity in 3-mo-old infants. We compared the visual event-related potentials evoked by unforeseen changes either in the identity of objects forming a set, or in the cardinal of this set. In adults and 4-y-old children, number sense relies on a dorsal system of bilateral intraparietal areas, different from the ventral occipitotemporal system sensitive to object identity. Scalp voltage topographies and cortical source modelling revealed a similar distinction in 3-mo-olds, with changes in object identity activating ventral temporal areas, whereas changes in number involved an additional right parietoprefrontal network. These results underscore the developmental continuity of number sense by pointing to early functional biases in brain organization that may channel subsequent learning to restricted brain areas.
所有人类，无论其文化和教育程度如何，都对数字有着直观的理解。行为证据表明，数字能力可能在婴儿早期就已存在。在此，我们展示了3个月大婴儿大脑中数字与物体识别的不同脑编码的成像证据。我们比较了由一组物体的识别变化或该组物体数量变化所引发的不可预见变化诱发的视觉事件相关电位。在成年人和4岁儿童中，数字感依赖于双侧顶内区域的背侧系统，这与对物体识别敏感的腹侧枕颞系统不同。头皮电压地形图和皮质源模型显示3个月大婴儿也有类似的区别，物体识别变化激活腹侧颞叶区域，而数字变化涉及额外的右侧顶叶-前额叶网络。这些结果通过指出大脑组织中早期的功能偏向，强调了数字感的发展连续性，这种偏向可能会将后续学习引导至特定的脑区。
