ArticlePLoS biology2023
Cortical representations of numbers and nonsymbolic quantities expand and segregate in children from 5 to 8 years of age.
Article in PLoS biology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Initial organization and progressive expansion of the math-responsive brain network during the first school years.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Home numeracy experiences are associated with number-related brain activity and connectivity in early childhood.NPJ science of learning · 2026Article
- The neurobiology of human sequential signal prediction: Insights from language, music, and mathematics.Neuroscience research · 2026Review
- Brain Representation of Numerosity across the Senses and Presentation Formats.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Distinct neural representational changes following cross-format number tutoring in children with mathematical difficulties.NPJ science of learning · 2025Article
- Numerical format integration in primary school children examined with frequency-tagged electroencephalography.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Origins of numbers: a shared language-of-thought for arithmetic and geometry?Trends in cognitive sciences · 2025Review
- Encoding models for developmental cognitive computational neuroscience: Promise, challenges, and potential.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2024Review
- Short-term number sense training recapitulates long-term neurodevelopmental changes from childhood to adolescence.Developmental science · 2024Article
- From brain to education through machine learning: Predicting literacy and numeracy skills from neuroimaging data.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Number symbols, such as Arabic numerals, are cultural inventions that have transformed human mathematical skills. Although their acquisition is at the core of early elementary education in children, it remains unknown how the neural representations of numerals emerge during that period. It is also unclear whether these relate to an ontogenetically earlier sense of approximate quantity. Here, we used multivariate fMRI adaptation coupled with within- and between-format machine learning to probe the cortical representations of Arabic numerals and approximate nonsymbolic quantity in 89 children either at the beginning (age 5) or four years into formal education (age 8). Although the cortical representations of both numerals and nonsymbolic quantities expanded from age 5 to age 8, these representations also segregated with learning and development. Specifically, a format-independent neural representation of quantity was found in the right parietal cortex, but only for 5-year-olds. These results are consistent with the so-called symbolic estrangement hypothesis, which argues that the relation between symbolic and nonsymbolic quantity weakens with exposure to formal mathematics in children.
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