4 ms·

These guys claim to see distinct “neural signatures” depending on whether n is >4 or =<4. They can see neurons misfiring for the larger numbers. Is it hard-cod

by apienx 3y ago

These guys claim to see distinct “neural signatures” depending on whether n is >4 or =<4. They can see neurons misfiring for the larger numbers. Is it hard-coded in our brains? My guess is no. You can probably train brains to instantly recognise patterns for numbers larger than 4, and I’d expect the observed effect would disappear for then trained individuals.

tgv 3y ago
It's a visual count. The visual system probably isn't optimized for counting. It identifies and tracks objects, but not many. I'm not surprised 4 is a common boundary, and I also wouldn't be surprised if it were somewhat hard-coded. It could well be limited by a "lower" layer. The experiment is artificial, so it might not represent counting in a more natural setting, where e.g. the objects might have features that distinguish them better. The article brushes over that.
monocasa 3y ago
There's a lot of evidence from other studies of being able to track about 4 simultaneous objects. It looks like (but we don't have concrete evidence quite yet) that somewhere (maybe higher level parts of the visual cortex, maybe something higher level like state scratch pads, maybe something else we haven't thought of) there's a four wide logical pathway. When we overload it, it seems that we sort of time slice whatever it is, jumping between the objects at roughly four at a time. In addition to performance tests, there's also the data point that there's a surprising amount of languages in pre agricultural societies that have words for 'one' through 'four', but anything else is some degree of 'many'. And yeah, you can train your brain to see larger sets if they're in a pattern that the middle parts of the visual cortex can train on, but the limit does seem to be around 4 visual symbols/tokens concurrently. Another place you see an interesting bandwidth limitation is that pretty much all languages have a pretty fixed semantic bits per secondnwhen spoken. Specifically around 39 bits per second. We can listen and hear faster but rates, but it's very difficult to speak faster. Similar to the above discussion the cute hack to go faster is to essentially give a single internal symbol to a larger sequence of syllables through training, not casting off the limitation but sort of hacking around it. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw2594 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw2594
- dboreham 3y ago
  PCI lanes
pixl97 3y ago
Not sure if it's hard coded, but the brain is taking a lot of visual shortcuts because of the limited visual bandwidth you have. https://youtu.be/HU6LfXNeQM4?si=PRdZP_hdwdyJQkdP&t=521 https://youtu.be/HU6LfXNeQM4?si=PRdZP_hdwdyJQkdP&t=521 Your Brain: Perception Deception This section is interesting on how little we see in high definition, and how much mental processing it takes.

by apienx 3y ago

tgv 3y ago

It's a visual count. The visual system probably isn't optimized for counting. It identifies and tracks objects, but not many. I'm not surprised 4 is a common boundary, and I also wouldn't be surprised if it were somewhat hard-coded. It could well be limited by a "lower" layer. The experiment is artificial, so it might not represent counting in a more natural setting, where e.g. the objects might have features that distinguish them better. The article brushes over that.

monocasa 3y ago

There's a lot of evidence from other studies of being able to track about 4 simultaneous objects. It looks like (but we don't have concrete evidence quite yet) that somewhere (maybe higher level parts of the visual cortex, maybe something higher level like state scratch pads, maybe something else we haven't thought of) there's a four wide logical pathway. When we overload it, it seems that we sort of time slice whatever it is, jumping between the objects at roughly four at a time. In addition to performance tests, there's also the data point that there's a surprising amount of languages in pre agricultural societies that have words for 'one' through 'four', but anything else is some degree of 'many'. And yeah, you can train your brain to see larger sets if they're in a pattern that the middle parts of the visual cortex can train on, but the limit does seem to be around 4 visual symbols/tokens concurrently. Another place you see an interesting bandwidth limitation is that pretty much all languages have a pretty fixed semantic bits per secondnwhen spoken. Specifically around 39 bits per second. We can listen and hear faster but rates, but it's very difficult to speak faster. Similar to the above discussion the cute hack to go faster is to essentially give a single internal symbol to a larger sequence of syllables through training, not casting off the limitation but sort of hacking around it. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw2594 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw2594

dboreham 3y ago
PCI lanes

pixl97 3y ago

Not sure if it's hard coded, but the brain is taking a lot of visual shortcuts because of the limited visual bandwidth you have. https://youtu.be/HU6LfXNeQM4?si=PRdZP_hdwdyJQkdP&t=521 https://youtu.be/HU6LfXNeQM4?si=PRdZP_hdwdyJQkdP&t=521 Your Brain: Perception Deception This section is interesting on how little we see in high definition, and how much mental processing it takes.