Zhou Yiwei, Chen Huanwen, Wang Yijun
The School of Automation, Central South University, Changsha, China.
Front Comput Neurosci. 2022 Jun 20;16:810448. doi: 10.3389/fncom.2022.810448. eCollection 2022.
Newborn animals, such as 4-month-old infants, 4-day-old chicks, and 1-day-old guppies, exhibit sensitivity to an approximate number of items in the visual array. These findings are often interpreted as evidence for an innate "number sense." However, number sense is typically investigated using explicit behavioral tasks, which require a form of calibration (e.g., habituation or reward-based training) in experimental studies. Therefore, the generation of number sense may be the result of calibration. We built a number-sense neural network model on the basis of lateral inhibition to explore whether animals demonstrate an innate "number sense" and determine important factors affecting this competence. The proposed model can reproduce size and distance effects of output responses of number-selective neurons when network connection weights are set randomly without an adjustment. Results showed that number sense can be produced under the influence of lateral inhibition, which is one of the fundamental mechanisms of the nervous system, and independent of learning.
新生动物，如4个月大的婴儿、4天大的小鸡和1天大的孔雀鱼，对视觉阵列中的大致物品数量表现出敏感性。这些发现通常被解释为先天“数字感”的证据。然而，数字感通常是通过明确的行为任务来研究的，在实验研究中，这些任务需要某种形式的校准（例如，习惯化或基于奖励的训练）。因此，数字感的产生可能是校准的结果。我们基于侧向抑制构建了一个数字感神经网络模型，以探究动物是否表现出先天“数字感”，并确定影响这种能力的重要因素。当网络连接权重随机设置而不进行调整时，所提出的模型可以重现数字选择性神经元输出响应的大小和距离效应。结果表明，数字感可以在侧向抑制的影响下产生，侧向抑制是神经系统的基本机制之一，且与学习无关。
