Date: Nov 18, 2020 03:00pm -4:30pm
Location: online
Title: Searching for the visual number form area: An adventure in open science
Speaker: Rebecca Merkley
Abstract:
The triple-code model of number representation proposed that there are three distinct brain regions for three different numerical representations: verbal words, visual digits and abstract magnitudes. It was hypothesized that the region for visual digits, known as the number form area, would be in ventral occipitotemporal cortex (vOTC), near other visual category-specific regions, such as the visual word form area. However, neuroimaging investigations searching for a region that responds in a category-specific manner to the visual presentation of number symbols have yielded inconsistent results. In this talk, I will report on a project exploring whether the putative ‘number form area’ can be reliably located in a reproducible region in the vOTC and whether it is truly a category-specific region for number symbols. I will also share what I learned about open science along the way.