Supramodal processing of discrete quantity information in humans

• Applicant: Dr. Bernhard Spitzer
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology ; Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience
• Term: from 2013 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 242924585

Previous work has identified a modality-independent neural signature of analogue quantity processing in humans, in terms of parametric modulations of large-scale oscillatory EEG activity. Independently, in previous monkey work, a supramodal representation of discrete quantity (i.e., numerosities) has been reported, however leaving open to what extent discrete quantity processing may also involve large-scale brain oscillations. Here, a series of human EEG studies is designed to investigate the encoding, memorizing, and comparison of discrete quantity information in the visual, auditory, and tactile modalities. In addition to conventional time-frequency analyses, a novel analysis approach based on convolution modeling will be employed to examine the online integration of discrete sensory evidence into abstract quantity information. The analyses, within and across different sensory modalities, are expected to yield elementary insights into the large-scale oscillatory mechanisms that may underly the abstract processing of discrete quantity in everyday human cognition.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants