When Blind People Do Algebra, the Brain's Visual Areas Light Up
1–10 of 67 posts
Re: When Blind People Do Algebra, the Brain's Visual Areas Light Up
#2A functional MRI study of 17 people blind since birth found that areas of visual cortex became active when the participants were asked to solve algebra problems, a team from Johns Hopkins reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Yeah, I'm gonna take this study with a grain of salt. Too many "fMRI studies of 17 people" have turned out to be barely disguised hooey.
Re: When Blind People Do Algebra, the Brain's Visual Areas Light Up
#3This seems to provide once more evidence for the hypotheses that the cortex implements some sort of general purpose algorithm. The visual cortex of a blind person does not receive any sensory information, but just information from other cortical areas. Perhaps it then simply learns (by reward modulation) to augment the high-order association that occurs in the occipital lobe. Interesting stuff.
Re: When Blind People Do Algebra, the Brain's Visual Areas Light Up
#4When people see, the brain's algebra area lights up.
Re: When Blind People Do Algebra, the Brain's Visual Areas Light Up
#5I wonder if this would have the same conclusion when they're presented with calculus or other forms of math.
Re: When Blind People Do Algebra, the Brain's Visual Areas Light Up
#6A functional MRI study of 17 people blind since birth found that areas of visual cortex became active when the participants were asked to solve algebra problems, a team from Johns Hopkins reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Yeah, I'm gonna take this study with a grain of salt. Too many "fMRI studies of 17 people" have turned out to be barely disguised hooey.
At least their software probably works now.
Re: When Blind People Do Algebra, the Brain's Visual Areas Light Up
#7A functional MRI study of 17 people blind since birth found that areas of visual cortex became active when the participants were asked to solve algebra problems, a team from Johns Hopkins reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Yeah, I'm gonna take this study with a grain of salt. Too many "fMRI studies of 17 people" have turned out to be barely disguised hooey.
At least their software probably works now.
Just because the bug was discovered doesn't mean it's been fixed in deployment. ;)
Remember, as well, the bug was only half of that paper's findings; they also found fundamental flaws in the method. Besides which, there are widespread methodological flaws that IMO make more difference.
Re: When Blind People Do Algebra, the Brain's Visual Areas Light Up
#8I wonder if this would have the same conclusion when they're presented with calculus or other forms of math.
or if, for example, the fear pathways light up when presented with analysis: "Suppose ε > 0 ..."
Re: When Blind People Do Algebra, the Brain's Visual Areas Light Up
#9If 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 wish studies didn't try to be as general sometimes - the anomalies are more interesting.
Re: When Blind People Do Algebra, the Brain's Visual Areas Light Up
#10Would it be fair and/or relevant to say that all areas of math can be represented geometrically