![]() ![]() ![]() Of the roughly 700 neurons they examined, 160 appeared to have a strong preference for a specific value between one and four.įor example, a given brain cell would send out a barrage of electrical signals whenever the animal saw three dots on the screen or the number three, but the same cell would not respond when the monkey was presented with other numerical values. The researchers painstakingly recorded the response rate of about 350 neurons located in each monkey’s prefrontal cortex. The team focused specifically on a walnut-sized area involved in higher-level thinking, known as the prefrontal cortex. Nieder and his colleagues used special probes to measure the electrical activity of individual neurons in the brains of the two primates performing this counting task for the numbers one through to four. The researchers also reversed the task, showing the Arabic numerals several seconds before the dots. An accurate response earned the animals a cup of apple juice, which they consider a treat. ![]() The monkeys had to pull a lever to indicate when the numeral matched the preceding count of dots. Andreas Nieder at the University of Tübingen in Germany and colleagues trained two rhesus monkeys to count by showing them various numbers of dots on a screen followed by Arabic numerals. ![]()
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