The neural basis of the Weber-Fechner law: a logarithmic mental number line.
نویسنده
چکیده
The recent discovery of number neurons allows for a dissection of the neuronal implementation of number representation. In a recent article, Nieder and Miller demonstrate a neural correlate of Weber's law, and thus resolve a classical debate in psychophysics: the mental number line seems to be logarithmic rather than linear.
منابع مشابه
Neural coding and the basic law of psychophysics.
There have been three main ideas about the basic law of psychophysics. In 1860, Fechner used Weber's law to infer that the subjective sense of intensity is related to the physical intensity of a stimulus by a logarithmic function (the Weber-Fechner law). A hundred years later, Stevens refuted Fechner's law by showing that direct reports of subjective intensity are related to the physical intens...
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TheWeber–Fechner law states that perceived intensity is proportional to physical stimuli on a logarithmic scale. In this work, we formulate a Bayesian framework for the scaling of perception and find logarithmic and related scalings are optimal under expected relative error fidelity. Therefore, the Weber–Fechner law arises as being information theoretically efficient under the constraint of lim...
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References 1 Feigenson, L. et al. (2004) Core systems of number. Trends Cogn. Sci. 8, 307–314 2 Nieder, A. et al. (2002) Representation of the quantity of visual items in the monkey prefrontal cortex. Science 297, 1708–1711 3 Verguts, T. and Fias, W. Representation of number in animals and humans: a neural model. J. Cogn. Neurosci. (in press) 4 Verguts, T. et al. A model of exact small number r...
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ورودعنوان ژورنال:
- Trends in cognitive sciences
دوره 7 4 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2003