Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • News & Views
  • Published:

COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE

Getting Numbers into Brains

Nature Human Behaviour volume 4, pages 1222–1223 (2020)Cite this article

Subjects

Perceptions of numerosity, duration and distance play fundamental roles in our behaviour and in our thinking, but how we perceive these abstract quantities is a mystery. Cheyette and Piantadosi provide a model that explains both new and long-standing experimental results on the accuracy and speed with which human subjects report the numerosity of a visible set.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

  1. Shannon, C. E. Bell Syst. Tech. J. 27, 623–656 (1948). 379–423.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Thomson, W. (Kelvin) in Popular Lectures and Addresses Vol. 1 p. 73–460 (Macmillan, 1883).

  3. Cheyette, S.J. & Piantadosi, S.T. Nat. Hum. Behav. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-00946-0 (2020).

  4. Gallistel, C. R. Finding numbers in the brain. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 373, 20170119 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Cover, T.M. & Thomas, J.A. Elements of Information Theory 2nd ed. (Wiley Interscience, 1991).

  6. Hayes, B. Am. Sci. 89, 490–494 (2001).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Fairhall, A. L., Lewen, G. D., Bialek, W. & de Ruyter Van Steveninck, R. R. Nature 412, 787–792 (2001).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Gallistel, C.R. & Gelman, R. in Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning (eds K. Holyoak & R. Morrison) 559–588 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005).

  9. Gibbon, J. Psychol. Rev. 84, 279–335 (1977).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology & Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University - New Brunswick, Piscataway, NJ, USA

    C. R. Gallistel

Authors
  1. C. R. Gallistel
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to C. R. Gallistel.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The author declares no competing interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Gallistel, C.R. Getting Numbers into Brains. Nat Hum Behav 4, 1222–1223 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-00970-0

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-00970-0

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing