Neurophysiology of nonsymbolic calculation in the primate brain

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Our symbolic arithmetic talent builds on nonsymbolic numerical capabilities. Human adults without formal education, prelinguistic human infants, and nonhuman animals use nonsymbolic number representations to perform approximate addition and subtraction. To deal with numerical information, humans and non-human primates share an elemental quantification system that resides in a dedicated neural network in the parietal and frontal lobes. However, how calculation operations are accomplished based on the electrical activity of populations of neurons in this network is unknown. The current proposal aims at investigating the neurophysiological mechanisms of arithmetic processes using single-neuron recordings in nonhuman primates. The psychophysical and neuronal representations of approximate addition and subtraction operations will be explored in behaving rhesus macaques. This approach will shed light on the fundamental neurobiological question of how cortical circuitries in primates enable abstract numerical transformations required during arithmetic that ultimately endow humans with symbolic mathematics.