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Numerosity, vision, language and mathematics

Understanding the neural functions that contribute to the birth of mathematical structure and meaning is an active subject of research in cognitive science. A significant amount of work has been done to identify an innate ability we share with other creatures, namely the ability to perceive quantity. This is sometimes called our approximate number sense. […]

More on category theory and the brain

I’ve referred to category theory on more than one occasion (particularly with respect to physicist Bob Coecke’s graphical language). Not too long ago, Ronald Brown, at Bangor University, brought my attention to the work that he and colleagues have been doing to investigate the kind of mathematics that could be used to model the complexity […]

My article in +Plus Magazine

My piece on Riemann and cognition was published this week in +Plus. Here’s the link.

Finding ourselves between physics and biology

The Institute of Physics (IOP) Biological Physics Group has a conference coming up June 24 to June 26 in Brighton, UK. The title of the conference is what first got my attention: Physics of Emergent Behavior/From single cells to groups of individuals.

The following text appears on the conference home page to introduce their interest […]

Pigeons, rats, monkeys and real numbers

I’d like today to stay on the topic of mathematics from the cognitive science perspective, and in particular, to make available another set of interesting studies summarized by C. R. Gallistel, Rochel Gelman and Sara Cordes. The studies are described in their contribution to the book Evolution and Culture (edited by Stephen C. Levinson and […]

Mental Magnitudes

I am increasingly fascinated by the mathematics of fundamental cognitive processes – like creatures finding their way to and from significant locations, or foraging for food, or foraging with the eyes, or comprehending the duration of an event. I’m excited by the fact that there are cognitive neuroscientists that have become focused on the architecture […]

The geometry of hallucinations

A recent blog from Jennifer Ouellette (from the Scientific American Blog Network) brought my attention once again to how mathematics is related to the structure-building functions of the brain. As I followed up on some of the references in her post, I found myself on a little journey through hallucinatory experiences that I really enjoyed.

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Lines on ochre and the roots of creativity

A nice article, focused on the origins of creativity, appears in the March 13 issue of Scientific American. Author, Heather Pringle, surveys research that seems to indicate that the human talent for innovation actually emerged over hundreds of thousands of years ago, before homo sapiens left Africa. This is contrary to the view held previously […]

Avalanches, structure, and expectations

New Scientist did an article in their February 6 issue called Mind Maths: Five laws that rule the brain.

As is usually the case, the article’s allure is the suggestion that new research may hold the promise of capturing the brain’s complexity in just a few mathematical models. And, as is usually the case, […]

Life’s music, movement, language and mathematics

Things happen in nature. Cells socialize and build structure, organisms grow, and move, and interact, and then more things grow – like music, language, and mathematics. Generally, talk about evolution is very pragmatic. Cell organization, the shaping of roots, leaves, nourishment mechanisms, reproductive drives, are all usually understood as fairly specific purposeful processes. Perhaps by […]