20
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Visual Occipito-Temporal N1 Sensitivity to Digits Across Elementary School

      research-article

      Read this article at

      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Number processing abilities are important for academic and personal development. The course of initial specialization of ventral occipito-temporal cortex (vOTC) sensitivity to visual number processing is crucial for the acquisition of numeric and arithmetic skills. We examined the visual N1, the electrophysiological correlate of vOTC activation across five time points in kindergarten (T1, mean age 6.60 years), middle and end of first grade (T2, 7.38 years; T3, 7.68 years), second grade (T4, 8.28 years), and fifth grade (T5, 11.40 years). A combination of cross-sectional and longitudinal EEG data of a total of 62 children (35 female) at varying familial risk for dyslexia were available to form groups of 23, 22, 27, 27, and 42 participants for each of the five time points. The children performed a target detection task which included visual presentation of single digits (DIG), false fonts (FF), and letters (LET) to derive measures for coarse (DIG vs. FF) and fine (DIG vs. LET) digit sensitive processing across development. The N1 amplitude analyses indicated coarse and fine sensitivity characterized by a stronger N1 to digits than false fonts across all five time points, and stronger N1 to digits than letters at all but the second (T2) time point. In addition, lower arithmetic skills were associated with stronger coarse N1 digit sensitivity over the left hemisphere in second grade (T4), possibly reflecting allocation of more attentional resources or stronger reliance on the verbal system in children with poorer arithmetic skills. To summarize, our results show persistent visual N1 sensitivity to digits that is already present early on in pre-school and remains stable until fifth grade. This pattern of digit sensitivity development clearly differs from the relatively sharp rise and fall of the visual N1 sensitivity to words or letters between kindergarten and middle of elementary school and suggests unique developmental trajectories for visual processing of written characters that are relevant to numeracy and literacy.

          Related collections

          Most cited references78

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory?

          A free-energy principle has been proposed recently that accounts for action, perception and learning. This Review looks at some key brain theories in the biological (for example, neural Darwinism) and physical (for example, information theory and optimal control theory) sciences from the free-energy perspective. Crucially, one key theme runs through each of these theories - optimization. Furthermore, if we look closely at what is optimized, the same quantity keeps emerging, namely value (expected reward, expected utility) or its complement, surprise (prediction error, expected cost). This is the quantity that is optimized under the free-energy principle, which suggests that several global brain theories might be unified within a free-energy framework.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: not found

            The unique role of the visual word form area in reading.

            Reading systematically activates the left lateral occipitotemporal sulcus, at a site known as the visual word form area (VWFA). This site is reproducible across individuals/scripts, attuned to reading-specific processes, and partially selective for written strings relative to other categories such as line drawings. Lesions affecting the VWFA cause pure alexia, a selective deficit in word recognition. These findings must be reconciled with the fact that human genome evolution cannot have been influenced by such a recent and culturally variable activity as reading. Capitalizing on recent functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments, we provide strong corroborating evidence for the hypothesis that reading acquisition partially recycles a cortical territory evolved for object and face recognition, the prior properties of which influenced the form of writing systems. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              Cultural recycling of cortical maps.

              Part of human cortex is specialized for cultural domains such as reading and arithmetic, whose invention is too recent to have influenced the evolution of our species. Representations of letter strings and of numbers occupy reproducible locations within large-scale macromaps, respectively in the left occipito-temporal and bilateral intraparietal cortex. Furthermore, recent fMRI studies reveal a systematic architecture within these areas. To explain this paradoxical cerebral invariance of cultural maps, we propose a neuronal recycling hypothesis, according to which cultural inventions invade evolutionarily older brain circuits and inherit many of their structural constraints.
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Front Hum Neurosci
                Front Hum Neurosci
                Front. Hum. Neurosci.
                Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
                Frontiers Media S.A.
                1662-5161
                26 July 2022
                2022
                : 16
                : 887413
                Affiliations
                [1] 1Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich , Zurich, Switzerland
                [2] 2Neuroscience Center Zurich, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich , Zurich, Switzerland
                [3] 3MR-Center, Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich , Zurich, Switzerland
                [4] 4Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research, Stanford University School of Medicine , Stanford, CA, United States
                Author notes

                Edited by: Joshua Oon Soo Goh, National Taiwan University, Taiwan

                Reviewed by: Joonkoo Park, University of Massachusetts Amherst, United States; Ting-Ting Chang, National Chengchi University, Taiwan

                *Correspondence: Silvia Brem, silvia.brem@ 123456uzh.ch

                This article was submitted to Cognitive Neuroscience, a section of the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

                Article
                10.3389/fnhum.2022.887413
                9360418
                4040bb0a-115b-468b-aa0f-73cf4b53d47c
                Copyright © 2022 Fraga-González, Di Pietro, Pleisch, Walitza, Brandeis, Karipidis and Brem.

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

                History
                : 01 March 2022
                : 20 June 2022
                Page count
                Figures: 6, Tables: 2, Equations: 0, References: 79, Pages: 16, Words: 13073
                Funding
                Funded by: Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung, doi 10.13039/501100001711;
                Funded by: Hartmann Müller-Stiftung für Medizinische Forschung, doi 10.13039/501100008475;
                Funded by: Olga Mayenfisch Stiftung, doi 10.13039/501100012654;
                Funded by: Fondation Botnar, doi 10.13039/501100011318;
                Categories
                Human Neuroscience
                Original Research

                Neurosciences
                erp,visual n1,occipito-temporal cortex,number processing,development,numeracy,arithmetic skills

                Comments

                Comment on this article