Human Brain Made for Counting


	Human Brain Made for Counting

invictus

8-19-2008 8:28 PM

993 views

tags:

numbers, language, brain, neuroscience, science

6 Comments |

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8-19-2008 9:59 PM

willhelm

Made?

8-20-2008 6:09 PM

invictus

Not my title Willhelm, I copied and pasted Discovery's title.

8-21-2008 9:59 AM

skwirlinator

Its funny how our brains detect individual objects. Imagine if we saw the world as 2d paintings instead of individual objects...

8-21-2008 10:04 AM

skwirlinator

off topic - Once again I have dominated the comment stream. I wish more people would discuss clips!

8-21-2008 2:52 PM

tanyamm

I totally agree with you skwirl.

9-2-2008 11:17 PM

masbury

There is so much we don't know yet!

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/8b29e12f-f312-4325-ba68-f194074f50e1/171DBB86-AD49-458C-9BF5-0387467C94FF/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/08/18/brain-math-counting.html" href="http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/08/18/brain-math-counting.html" style="font-size: 11px;">dsc.discovery.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/08/18/brain-math-counting.html"><P><STRONG>Aug. 18, 2008</STRONG> -- Answer this without counting: Are there more X's here XXXXXX, or here XXXXX? That's a problem facing people whose <A target="_blank" href="http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/10/18/neanderthal-language-dna.html">languages</A> don't include words for more than one or two. Yet researchers say children who speak those languages are still able to compare quantities. </P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/08/18/brain-math-counting.html"><P>"We argue that humans possess an innate system for enumeration that doesn't rely on words," says Brian Butterworth of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/08/18/brain-math-counting.html"><P>In an attempt to prove it, Butterworth compared the numerical skills of children from two indigenous Australian groups whose languages don't contain many number words with similar children who speak English.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/08/18/brain-math-counting.html"><P>All the groups performed equally well, his research team reports in Tuesday's edition of <EM>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</EM>.</P></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/171DBB86-AD49-458C-9BF5-0387467C94FF/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content7.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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