Neurophysiology of nonsymbolic calculation in the primate brain

我们的符号算术天赋建立在非符号的数字能力之上。未受过正规教育的成人、语言前人类婴儿和非人类动物使用非符号数字表示法进行近似加法和减法。为了处理数字信息，人类和非人类灵长类动物共享一个基本的量化系统，该系统驻留在顶叶和额叶的专用神经网络中。然而，如何根据该网络中神经元群体的电活动来完成计算操作尚不清楚。目前的建议旨在利用非人类灵长类动物的单个神经元记录来研究算术过程的神经生理学机制。我们将在猕猴身上探索近似加法和减法运算的心理物理和神经元表征。这一方法将阐明基本的神经生物学问题，即灵长类动物的皮质回路如何实现算术过程中所需的抽象数字转换，最终赋予人类符号数学。

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.