Numbers meet space - Rosa Rugani
  • Home
  • The project
  • The Departments and Universities
  • Pills of numbers and space
    • News
    • Posters
    • Gallery
  • About
    • Rosa Rugani
    • Press
  • EMAIL
  • Search
  • Menu Menu

THE PROJECT

At the roots of Spatial Numerical Association: From behavioral observation to neural basis, SNANeB

The SNANeB project is funded by the European Commission under the action “Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)”. Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowships finance international mobility of experienced researchers of all ages, nationalities and scientific disciplines within European Countries or between a European country and a country outside Europe.  The goal of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowships consists in giving researchers the chance to enhance their career by increasing international research experience and expanding new scientific competences.

Scientific background and aims

Only adult humans master complex math using symbols and language, but whenever their use is prevented, they can still represent numbers approximately. This approximate number sense emerges early in life and shows a pattern of similarities with the number sense of infants and animals. Uniquely human mathematical abilities appear to be scaffolded on this ontogenetically and evolutionarily ancient “number sense”.

A peculiarity of numbers is their strong association with space. Humans represent number on a left to right oriented Mental Number Line, with small numbers located on their left and larger ones on their right. Historically, the association between number and space has been considered a by-product of culture. Recent evidence reported a tendency to associate numbers and space in infants and newborns. Nevertheless, the researches that toss most uncertainties on the importance of language and symbolic thought for the origin of the spatial numerical association, SNA, come from comparative research. Evidence on the SNA in animals advocates that it originates from non-symbolic and biologically determined precursors, but these are still unknown.

This SNANeB project is focused on studying the SNA in day-old domestic chicks and monkeys, thus addressing its wellspring in the absence of language or culture and to unveil the neural basis of numerical cognition. A superior knowledge of neural representation of numbers will permit optimized designs of clinical applications to enhance numerical comprehension.

latest news

How to make chicks count with a single hemisphere

9 November 2020
We share with other species an intriguing similarity in representing numbers in space, from left to right.
Read more
https://www.numbersmeetspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/How-to-make-chicks-count-with-a-single-hemisphere.jpg 650 1300 Daria Lodi https://www.numbersmeetspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/numbers_meet_space_400_135.png Daria Lodi2020-11-09 18:07:002020-11-20 18:11:06How to make chicks count with a single hemisphere

When numbers bias chicks’ choices

2 November 2020
Most people who read and write from left to right, orientate numbers in the same direction.
Read more
https://www.numbersmeetspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/when-numbers-bias-chicks-choices.jpg 878 1300 Daria Lodi https://www.numbersmeetspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/numbers_meet_space_400_135.png Daria Lodi2020-11-02 17:53:002020-11-20 17:53:35When numbers bias chicks’ choices

Newborn chicks associate numbers and space

5 October 2020
In the early 1800s, Sir Francis Galton, a British polymath, showed for the first time that humans describe and think of numbers as being represented on a mental number line oriented from their left to right.
Read more
https://www.numbersmeetspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Newborn_chicks_associate_numbers_and_space.jpg 720 1280 Daria Lodi https://www.numbersmeetspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/numbers_meet_space_400_135.png Daria Lodi2020-10-05 17:36:002020-11-20 17:36:48Newborn chicks associate numbers and space
Page 2 of 512345
ALL NEWS

LATEST POSTERS

  • A face is more than just a number for young domestic chicks. Individual processing of face-like displays supports 3vs.4 discrimination.10 February 2022 - 19:03
  • Middle identification and spatial numerical bias in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta)10 February 2022 - 18:58

UNIPD ON FACEBOOK

UNIPD Department of General Psychology

POWERED BY

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation
programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 795242

2020 © Copyright - Numbers meet space - Rosa Rugani | credits Creative Web Studio | Privacy Policy | Cookie Policy
Scroll to top