SNARC meets SPARC in fMRI--Interdependence of compatibility effects depends on semantic content.

Background: Stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) plays a major role in choice-reaction tasks. In specific cases, SRC leads to phenomena like the Spatial Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) or the Spatial Pitch Association of Response Codes (SPARC) effect: small numbers or low pitches lead to faster responses when answered with the left hand, whereas large numbers or high pitches lead to faster responses when answered with the right hand. The previous study, investigating the combination of SNARC and SPARC with numbers spoken in different pitch heights, points towards an interdependency of both SNARC and SPARC compatibility effects, suggesting an automatic process.

Methods: In the present event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we investigated the underlying neural activity when SNARC and SPARC are combined within the same auditory stimulus (numerical condition). Additionally, we included a categorical condition (the words "small" and "large") as variation of the stimulus type.

Results: We found neither an effect for SNARC nor for SPARC Compatibility in the neuronal data, whereas SNARC Compatibility was found in the behavioral data. According to the behavioral as well as the neuronal data, in the bilateral auditory cortex, SNARC and SPARC Compatibility interacts with Stimulus Type, i.e., whether numerical or categorical stimuli were presented.

Conclusions: We concluded that both effects are interdependent and that this interaction strongly depends on the semantic information.