Distinct Representations of Magnitude and Spatial Position within Parietal Cortex during Number-Space Mapping.

Mapping numbers onto space is foundational to mathematical cognition. These cognitive operations are often conceptualized in the context of a "mental number line" and involve multiple brain regions in or near the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) that have been implicated both in numeral and spatial cognition. Here we examine possible differentiation of function within these brain areas in relating numbers to spatial positions.

Age of acquisition in sport: starting early matters.

Although the age at which a skill is learned (age of acquisition [AoA]) is one of the most studied predictors of success in domains ranging from language to music, very little work has focused on this factor in sports. In order to uncover how the age at which a skill is learned relates to how athletes cognitively represent that skill, we asked a group of skilled golfers who learned to play golf before (early learners) or after (late learners) the age of 10 to take a series of putts on an indoor putting green. Golfers putted in isolation (single-task condition), while monitoring a stream of words presented over a loudspeaker (dual-task condition), or while being instructed to attend to specific aspects of their golf swing (skill-focused condition).

Choke or thrive? The relation between salivary cortisol and math performance depends on individual differences in working memory and math-anxiety.

In the current study, we explored how a person's physiological arousal relates to their performance in a challenging math situation as a function of individual differences in working memory (WM) capacity and math-anxiety. Participants completed demanding math problems before and after which salivary cortisol, an index of arousal, was measured. The performance of lower WM individuals did not depend on cortisol concentration or math-anxiety.

Situating math word problems: the story matters.

In two experiments, we explored how the situation model of a math story problem impacts math problem performance. Participants completed multiplication story problems in which a set of objects was associated with or dissociated from a protagonist, making them more or less accessible in memory during answer retrieval. On the basis of previous findings that the sum of two numbers interferes with retrieval of their product, the number of objects in the math problem was either highly interfering ("9" for 4 x 5) or less interfering ("8" for 4 x 5) for multiplication retrieval in the problem.

The role of personal experience in the neural processing of action-related language.

We investigated how auditory language processing is modified by a listener's previous experience with the specific activities mentioned in the speech. In particular, we asked whether neural responses related to language processing depend on one's experience with the action-based content of this language. Ice-hockey players and novices passively listened to sentences about ice-hockey and everyday situations during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Sports experience changes the neural processing of action language.

Experience alters behavior by producing enduring changes in the neural processes that support performance. For example, performing a specific action improves the execution of that action via changes in associated sensory and motor neural circuitry, and experience using language improves language comprehension by altering the anatomy and physiology of perisylvian neocortical brain regions. Here we provide evidence that specialized (sports) motor experience enhances action-related language understanding by recruitment of left dorsal lateral premotor cortex, a region normally devoted to higher-level action selection and implementation-even when there is no intention to perform a real action.