Brains Hard-Wired for Math

mcgrew writes "New Scientist is reporting that "non-human primates really can understand the meaning of numerals." The small study of two rhesus monkeys reveals that cells in their brains respond selectively to specific number values — regardless of whether the amount is represented by dots on a screen or an Arabic numeral. For example, a given brain cell in the monkey will respond to the number three, but not the number one. The results suggest that individual cells in human brains might also have a fine-tuned preference for specific numerical values." The report itself is online at PLoS Biology, Semantic Associations between Signs and Numerical Categories in the Prefrontal Cortex."

Comments

Numbers or numerals?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it more likely that the brain responds to numbers, and is also able to learn an association between numerals and numbers?

To say that nonhuman primates respond to numerals makes it sound like they evolved to benefit from written language, which would be kinda weird, ya know.

Re:binary

[JustOK]

Its true that there are two types of people:
1) those that can infer and extrapolate from incomplete data