Post by account_disabled on Mar 4, 2024 22:53:37 GMT -5
Scientists at Johns Hopkins University, in the State of Maryland, United States, discovered that the human brain activates different neural mechanisms when interpreting quantities. This finding provides an answer to the seemingly simple question of why it is easier to distinguish a few elements than several.
If a person encounters a small cat walking down the street, they will immediately know that it is a single animal. If, instead of a solitary feline, the viewer sees three of them, they will also be able to identify at a glance how many mem Chinese Overseas Asia Number Data bers the group has. Things change after the fifth cat. If the same person came across seven of them walking together, they would have to look for several more seconds to see the exact number of cats.
Daily experience indicates that as an assembly houses more components, it becomes more difficult to instantly identify and separate its parts. For most, this statement is a matter of common sense, but for neurologists , the explanation behind the phenomenon is more complex than it seems.
This is a digital reconstruction of a circuit of neurons created from the Human Brain Project
Human Brain Project: million euros in neural research comes to an end
The European Union is about to end funding for the largest neuroscientific research project in the region in the last decade.
Thanks to an experiment with patients, a group of researchers discovered that the difference in the ability to quantify objects is due to the presence of at least two different neural systems dedicated to numeral discrimination. In the brain , there are neurons that activate exclusively when they see one, two, three and four elements in the visual field. However, when the viewer observes more than five objects, no more neural regions are activated and the event is interpreted in a single region.
The discovery occurred by coincidence. The scientists, interested in revealing one of the basic mechanisms of discriminatory thinking, took advantage of the fact that there was a group of test subjects nearby with electrodes in their brains to measure neural activity while they were awake. There were children who were being treated for seizures at the University Hospital of Bonn, in Germany.
With the same devices to measure the neuronal response, a simple test was applied to the patients. The scientists presented them with images containing between zero and nine dots. As they turned each slide, the research team asked the children whether the number of dots shown was an even or odd number. The children easily responded to the image with the four dots. From the five points, it was difficult for them to discriminate the quantities with the naked eye. By verifying the responses with brain activity, the two numerical information processing systems were observed.
Neurons that prefer numbers
Previous research already suggested that some neurons in the brain specialize in handling specific numbers . Brain cells have preferred numbers and when they see or think about them, in the case of symbolic quantities, they activate as if they were predisposed. The hypothesis presented a logical problem derived from the infinite nature of the figures. If neurons have the potential to specialize on a number, then all available neurons in the brain could be assigned a number or be trained to react to a number of six zeros, for example.
If a person encounters a small cat walking down the street, they will immediately know that it is a single animal. If, instead of a solitary feline, the viewer sees three of them, they will also be able to identify at a glance how many mem Chinese Overseas Asia Number Data bers the group has. Things change after the fifth cat. If the same person came across seven of them walking together, they would have to look for several more seconds to see the exact number of cats.
Daily experience indicates that as an assembly houses more components, it becomes more difficult to instantly identify and separate its parts. For most, this statement is a matter of common sense, but for neurologists , the explanation behind the phenomenon is more complex than it seems.
This is a digital reconstruction of a circuit of neurons created from the Human Brain Project
Human Brain Project: million euros in neural research comes to an end
The European Union is about to end funding for the largest neuroscientific research project in the region in the last decade.
Thanks to an experiment with patients, a group of researchers discovered that the difference in the ability to quantify objects is due to the presence of at least two different neural systems dedicated to numeral discrimination. In the brain , there are neurons that activate exclusively when they see one, two, three and four elements in the visual field. However, when the viewer observes more than five objects, no more neural regions are activated and the event is interpreted in a single region.
The discovery occurred by coincidence. The scientists, interested in revealing one of the basic mechanisms of discriminatory thinking, took advantage of the fact that there was a group of test subjects nearby with electrodes in their brains to measure neural activity while they were awake. There were children who were being treated for seizures at the University Hospital of Bonn, in Germany.
With the same devices to measure the neuronal response, a simple test was applied to the patients. The scientists presented them with images containing between zero and nine dots. As they turned each slide, the research team asked the children whether the number of dots shown was an even or odd number. The children easily responded to the image with the four dots. From the five points, it was difficult for them to discriminate the quantities with the naked eye. By verifying the responses with brain activity, the two numerical information processing systems were observed.
Neurons that prefer numbers
Previous research already suggested that some neurons in the brain specialize in handling specific numbers . Brain cells have preferred numbers and when they see or think about them, in the case of symbolic quantities, they activate as if they were predisposed. The hypothesis presented a logical problem derived from the infinite nature of the figures. If neurons have the potential to specialize on a number, then all available neurons in the brain could be assigned a number or be trained to react to a number of six zeros, for example.