Meta-Analysis of the Neural Correlates of Finger Gnosis using Activation Likelihood Estimation
- Marcie Penner, Psychology, King's University College, London, Ontario, Canada
- Michael Moes, Psychology, King's University College, London, Ontario, Canada
- Aaron L. Cecala, Robarts Research Institute, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada
AbstractFinger gnosis is the ability to mentally represent one’s fingers as distinct from one another in the absence of visual feedback. In the current paper, we conducted a quantitative meta-analysis of imaging data, using activation likelihood estimation, to determine the neural correlates of finger gnosis. Fourteen studies contributed 294 activated foci from 225 participants for analysis. The meta-analysis yielded seven peaks of activation located within the frontal-parietal network (i.e., medial frontal gyrus, pre- and post-central gyrus, and inferior parietal lobule) and cerebellum (i.e. culmen). A qualitative comparison of the findings of our meta-analysis with single-experiment fMRI investigations of finger gnosis (Andres et al., 2012; Rusconi et al., 2014) suggests that experimentalists’ choices of primary and control tasks have influenced our understanding of the neural substrate underlying finger gnosis. Our results may aid in the design and interpretation of behavioural and imaging experiments as well as inform the development of computational models.