Live data from Hacker News

When Blind People Do Algebra, the Brain's Visual Areas Light Up

npr.org

41–50 of 67 posts

Re: When Blind People Do Algebra, the Brain's Visual Areas Light Up

#41
post #10

Would it be fair and/or relevant to say that all areas of math can be represented geometrically

I dunno.

There's a lot of conceptual metaphors and sometimes even structure from geometry in higher maths, but this is sometimes very abstract and merely makes reference to non-geometric ideas about geometry previously developed.

For example, in the kind of stochastic calculus quant finance people learn, there's an isometry (like a transformation that preserves size in some sense) between two very different kinds of continuous, non-enumerable spaces. Geometric intuition is of no help there -- you did learn what an isometry was in high school so you know the word, but you can't see function spaces in any way, shape or fashion.

OTOH what I'm working on for my dissertation is "geometric integrators" for certain kinds of differential equations where the isometries and references to geometry are more direct; basically, the most common numerical solvers for initial value problems in ODEs preserve certain invariants and are useful for many many problems, but sometimes you want computation to preserve some sense of volume -- clasically, in mechanics. So even though many problems are too abstract to be seen, the notion of volume conservation is the best way to acquire the basic notions of the field.

Re: When Blind People Do Algebra, the Brain's Visual Areas Light Up

#43
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that I engage the visual part of my brain in those moments when I truly understand algebra. It's very beautifully overwhelming and understanding such complex mathematics through visualisation brings about one of the few moments where I get naturally high through cognitive tasks. I wouldn't consider myself a very visual person otherwise.

I'm the same way and came to a similar conclusion a while back. For me, understanding math has been an incredibly visual process more than anything. It's a very useful heuristic. Programming is similar, but its discreteness seems to make it significantly less visual.

While I understand that "programming is not visual" is a common point of view, I strongly disagree with it. See here:

http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/

Re: When Blind People Do Algebra, the Brain's Visual Areas Light Up

#44
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that the name many humans have agreeds to call an area of the brain is an objectively true label for it. I mean it's not like there's an owners manual for the human brain.

The point is that it's pretty clearly a visual area above all else. The pathway from the eye to V1 is possibly the most extensively studied functional neuroanatomical pathway in the brain. It's also well-established that it takes input from other regions and that this adjusts visual percepts. The idea that mathematical operations recruit visual areas is unsurprising and predicted by every theory of numerical cognitio…

This is perhaps a poor backup claim because I can't give a relevant citation, but back when I was in Neuroscience / neuroanatomy in medical school, I remember feeling deeply impressed at the level to which we do understand the visual processing system in the brain. Its far more comprehensive than simple imaging studies -- we know where the wires go, how the photons are transduced and turned into patterns of neurons firing, etc. There's of course plenty to learn but our depth of understanding in regards to human vision is impressive.

Re: When Blind People Do Algebra, the Brain's Visual Areas Light Up

#46

If areas of the brain could have any purpose, why are the same purposes allocated to the same areas in each person? This doesn't make any sense to me. Of course, brains aren't totally uniform, but the fact that you can say "x area is used for y activity in general" seems pretty absurd. Or maybe there is a particular, most efficient arrangement of departments. But surely this can't be achieved in every individual. I w…

For one sensory input nerves and motor output nerves have distinct entry/exit points. I.e. visual preprocessing must ofcourse take place in the brain where the optical nerves enter.

Re: When Blind People Do Algebra, the Brain's Visual Areas Light Up

#47
post #42
post #10

Would it be fair and/or relevant to say that all areas of math can be represented geometrically

As a layperson, I don't know how you could represent infinite sets, unless you just pick a random, finite symbol.

Any line segment, for example, is an infinite set of points.

Re: When Blind People Do Algebra, the Brain's Visual Areas Light Up

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the article says sighted people do not have an increase in that area when doing algebra. I tend to agree with the premise of the article, which is brain areas can be reapportioned for different tasks.

I'm pretty sure that I engage the visual part of my brain in those moments when I truly understand algebra. It's very beautifully overwhelming and understanding such complex mathematics through visualisation brings about one of the few moments where I get naturally high through cognitive tasks. I wouldn't consider myself a very visual person otherwise.

This comment reminds me of high school physics, when we were learning about interference and those double slit experiments. The teacher would give different scenarios and ask us to predict what patterns would be observed. In one, the pattern was alternating bands of dark and light. I was the only kid who could figure it out, and the physics teacher was so visibly impressed, he to started calling me the thinker. That thing, visualizing something given to you in mathematical form, feels very good indeed.

Re: When Blind People Do Algebra, the Brain's Visual Areas Light Up

#50

Are we ever going to move past this 'what parts light up' stage of neuroscience? one-trick-pony science.

It's a good question, I've been asking that myself.

I have recently befriended a post-doc in neuroscience and in one of his lectures he referred to "part of brain lighting up" as a legitimate research method. So it's not pop-science, it's how the actuals science is being done today.

The brain is vast in it's complexity, so much so that we don't even grasp the magnitude of the complexity itself. There are between 10^11 and 10^13 neurons, depending on the method of approximation. There are 10^4 dendrites (inputs) to each neuron, and one output (axon). The inputs are analogue and mediated by chemistry. The output is binary, thankfully, however the axon is fairly long and itself can go in/out of order based on certain chemical balance along its entire length.

It's a heck of a job.

Post reply on HN