Lindemann, O. & Krausse, F.
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour; Nijmegen The Netherlands
Our research aims to investigate the coupling between high-level cognitive processes, such as the reading of meaningful symbols, and low-level processes as involved in visual perception and the control of motor behaviour. The presented studies will focus on the mechanisms underlying the representation of magnitude information in these different domains and their neural substrates. Our behavioural experiments demonstrate that magnitude representations for numbers are functionally linked to size-related codes required for perception and action. This will be illustrated by two types of effects: a numerical size-congruity effect on visual search performances and non-spatial compatibility effects between number stimuli and motor responses. We present furthermore recent fMRI data that aim to explore the neural substrates of such a shared magnitude metric by comparing spatial (i.e., SNARC) and non-spatial number-response compatibility effects. All results will be discussed in the context of recent models on number processing and an embodied approach to mathematical cognition.