| Publications of year 2008 |
| Articles in journals |
| Abstract: | All humans, regardless of their culture and education, possess an intuitive understanding of number. Behavioural evidence suggests that numerical competence may be present early on in infancy. Here, we present brain-imaging evidence for distinct cerebral coding of number and object identity in 3-mo-old infants. We compared the visual event-related potentials evoked by unforeseen changes either in the identity of objects forming a set, or in the cardinal of this set. In adults and 4-y-old children, number sense relies on a dorsal system of bilateral intraparietal areas, different from the ventral occipitotemporal system sensitive to object identity. Scalp voltage topographies and cortical source modelling revealed a similar distinction in 3-mo-olds, with changes in object identity activating ventral temporal areas, whereas changes in number involved an additional right parietoprefrontal network. These results underscore the developmental continuity of number sense by pointing to early functional biases in brain organization that may channel subsequent learning to restricted brain areas. |
| Abstract: | While neglected stimuli can still be processed,few studies have directly addressed the issue of the unconscious access to semantics. In order to clarify this issue,we engaged four patients with unilateral left spatial neglect in a number comparison task. Each target number was preceded by a lateralized number prime,either in the intact or neglected hemifield (HF). Both group analyses and the intensive study of a single patient show that left (neglected) as well as right (consciously perceived) number primes affect performance: primes representing quantities that fall on the same side of the reference as the target lead to faster categorization. This congruency effect is highly suggestive of numerical semantic processing of neglected stimuli. Absence of conscious perception of neglected primes was evaluated using a combination of subjective and objective measures of performance in forced-choice tasks. |
| Abstract: | A briefly presented target shape can be made invisible by the subsequent presentation of a mask that replaces the target. While varying the target–mask interval in order to investigate perception near the consciousness threshold,we discovered a novel visual illusion. At some intervals,the target is clearly visible,but its location is misperceived. By manipulating the mask's size and target's position,we demonstrate that the perceived target location is always displaced to the boundary of a virtual surface defined by the mask contours. Thus,mutual exclusion of surfaces appears as a cause of masking. |
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Note that this is not the exhaustive list of publications, but only a selection. Contact the individual authors for complete lists of references.
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