Researchers at University College London and the University of Trento in Italy strapped a sensor cap on newborns and watched their brains flinch at the difference between four dots and twelve. The babies were, on average, one day old. They still had umbilical stumps. They cannot hold their heads up. They can, however, do more math than I did last April.
Credit where it's due: the parietotemporal area, a slice of brain behind the ear, lights up at numerosity from hour one. That's genuinely elegant. Then you remember the same brain will, in three decades, willingly sign a car loan.
The lead scientist, Brian Butterworth, thinks this could help spot dyscalculia — trouble with numbers — early. Great. Diagnose me. I'm 34. My rent is due. A wet, blinking potato just outscored me on a quiz.
Related twisted takes: Italian Scientists Discover Babies Yawn In The Womb, I Invented Yawni… · A Slice of Insanity: Pi's Existential Crisis · Scientists: Put Serum AND Sunscreen On. Ronald: I Use Neither and My…
Based on the original article "Babies are born with the neural foundations for maths".
