October 21, 2024
3 minimum read
How your brain processes zero (not exactly “nothing”)
What we think when we think of ‘zilch’ is surprisingly complex, neuroscientists have discovered
The invention of zero made many mathematical calculations possible.
Many mathematical equations can be solved only thanks to a special human invention – the number zero. In many ways, it’s a strange concept. It is a quantity defined by absence. Also, this theory, which appeared relatively recently in the cultural history of humanity, gives rise to several paradoxes, for example the inability to divide by zero, and is the basis of mathematics.
But “null” is not easy to understand. “Mastering zero requires a higher level of abstract thinking…We need to ‘make something out of nothing,'” says Benji Barnett, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London. .
Zero’s recent surprise may lie in how well the brain has learned how to process that abstraction. Current research shows that the concept of zero can be processed in a similar way to many numbers and located along the mental number line.
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In a recent study by co-senior authors Andreas Nieder of the University of Tübingen and Florian Mormann of the University Hospital Bonn in Germany, researchers demonstrated that the brain processes ‘zero’ in at least two different locations. did. One is number processing and the other is number processing. the empty set it represents. The research team made the discovery during an experiment on 17 epilepsy patients. All participants had microelectrodes inserted into their temporal lobes in preparation for surgery. The hair-thin sensors made it possible to observe how individual neurons responded when subjects were concentrating on a task.
During the experiment, each participant viewed a small screen that displayed a different set of numbers from 0 to 9. This screen is represented as a cloud of points on one side (the “zero” is a cloud in the sky) and as Arabic numerals on the other side. By monitoring the subjects’ brain activity, the researchers observed neurons that specifically responded to the empty set and neurons that specifically responded to the number zero.
The finding itself isn’t all that surprising, says Ben Harvey, a cognitive neuroscientist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands who was not involved in the study. He points out that the empty set is “a quantity of physical objects… whereas symbolic numbers, including zero, are linguistic signifiers, constituents of language rather than physical objects.”
Moreover, this same basic pattern (e.g., activating different neurons for the number 3 rather than three dots) also applies to other numbers studied so far. However, when considering zero, the distinction between the empty set and numbers can be particularly important. “If you look closer, based on behavioral data and neural data, zero is still slightly different. It’s still special,” Nieder says. “It’s this eccentric uncle from the Numbers clan.”
For example, he and his colleagues found that people take longer to process the empty set than the symbolic number 0. Given these findings, Morman said: Theory related to mathematics. ”
Zero can be conceptualized on several levels: as an “absence,” a special category of emptiness, a quantity, or a number used in calculations. Many animals have a sense of numbers, but Nieder, who has studied crows and monkeys, suspects that humans are the only ones who use zero mathematically.
Additionally, the number zero used in mathematics is something humans need to learn from others and is not an innate concept. Children usually don’t understand until they are about 6 years old. That’s about two years later than the other numbers.
The idea that zero is somehow different also comes from brain injury research. About 14 percent of people who have a stroke may not be able to read or process numbers, including the number zero, Barnett said. In August, he and Stephen Fleming, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London, discovered that whether a person thinks of zero as a number or an empty set, the brain moves zero along the mental number line. We published research results showing that Nieder and Mohrman’s team demonstrated the same thing, albeit using different methods and focusing on different brain regions.
“Overall, these two studies complement each other well and greatly help us better understand how zero is represented in the human brain,” Fleming says.
This article was first published Wissenschaft spectrum Reprinted with permission.
