How the Brain Maps Symbols to Numbers


	How the Brain Maps Symbols to Numbers

wildcat

11-19-2007 9:45 AM

438 views

tags:

science, brain, mapping, symbols, numbers, cortex, abstract concepts

wildcat says:

"Humans learn to use symbols as mental tools during childhood; prior to the utilization of signs as symbols, long-term associations between initially meaningless shapes and semantic categories must inevitably be established,"

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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/70748075-2825-455d-bc82-4c392f75d9f1/4C9B6C23-283C-41D6-9659-473FCF8E42E1/" 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://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-the-brain-maps-symbol" href="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-the-brain-maps-symbol" style="font-size: 11px;">www.sciam.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-the-brain-maps-symbol"><H2>New research shows the prefrontal cortex handles the work of associating numerals with matching quantities</H2></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://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-the-brain-maps-symbol"><P>In a study that involved teaching monkeys to associate Arabic numerals with their corresponding quantities, German researchers fingered the prefrontal cortex as the part of the mammalian brain that is responsible for relating symbols with abstract concepts.
</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://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-the-brain-maps-symbol"><P>The finding was surprising to the Andreas Nieder, head of the Primate NeuroCognition Laboratory at the University of Tübingen, and his graduate student Ilka Diester, who figured that the intraparietal sulcus, a lateral region in the rear brain, handled this task.
</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://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-the-brain-maps-symbol"><P>"In verbally counting humans, the parietal cortex seems to be the key structure for symbolic number representations," Nieder says, about the study result is published this week in <I>PLoS Biology</I>. "Damage to certain parts of the parietal lobe in humans can elicit very specific deficits in dealing with numbers."
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