Citation

Chiao JY, Harada T, Oby ER, Li Z, Parrish T, Bridge DJ. Neuropsychologia 2009; 47(2): 354-363.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA. jchiao@northwestern.edu

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2008.09.023

PMID

18992759

Abstract

Mental representations of social status hierarchy share properties with that of numbers. Previous neuroimaging studies have shown that the neural representation of numerical magnitude lies within a network of regions within inferior parietal cortex. However the neural basis of social status hierarchy remains unknown. Using fMRI, we studied subjects while they compared social status magnitude of people, objects and symbols, as well as numerical magnitude. Both social status and number comparisons recruited bilateral intraparietal sulci. We also observed a semantic distance effect whereby neural activity within bilateral intraparietal sulci increased for semantically close relative to far numerical and social status comparisons. These results demonstrate that social status and number comparisons recruit distinct and overlapping neuronal representations within human inferior parietal cortex.

Language: en