Our new study (Debray*, Karami* et al.) explores how the brain encodes basic math concepts (integers, fractions, shapes). Samuel Debray led the 7T fMRI & behavioral work; I led the MEG.
@danielavalerio.bsky.social
@chrplr.bsky.social
@standehaene.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
With the cumulative model, we get an added benefit: it yields precise hypotheses about the mental representation of each number.
For instance, 24 is most likely represented as 4×6, but also as 2×12, 3×8, or the successor of 23—in that order.
Some of this isn’t new.
Dehaene & Mehler (1992) already showed that number word frequencies follow a ~1/n² law.
They suggested that while cultural or environmental factors could explain some of the frequency curve, the psychological organization of number concepts must play a major role.
Building on this, we tested a new cognitive model based on a Language of Thought (LoT) introduced by Dehaene et al., 2025.
The idea: number concepts are constructed in the mind using simple building blocks—1, +, and ×.
