Our understanding of how the human brain performs mathematical calculations is far from complete, but in recent years there have been many exciting breakthroughs by scientists all over the world. Now, in The Number Sense, Stanislas Dehaene offers a fascinating look at this recent research, in an enlightening exploration of the mathematical mind. Dehaene begins with the eye-opening discovery that animals-including rats, pigeons, raccoons, and chimpanzees-can perform simple mathematical calculations, and that human infants also have a rudimentary number sense. Dehaene suggests that this rudimentary number sense is as basic to the way the brain understands the world as our perception of color or of objects in space, and, like these other abilities, our number sense is wired into the brain. These are but a few of the wealth of fascinating observations contained here. We also discover, for example, that because Chinese names for numbers are so short, Chinese people can remember up to nine or ten digits at a time-English-speaking people can only remember seven. The book also explores the unique abilities of idiot savants and mathematical geniuses, and we meet people whose minute brain lesions render their mathematical ability useless. This new and completely updated edition includes all of the most recent scientific data on how numbers are encoded by single neurons, and which brain areas activate when we perform calculations.
The Number Sense
e oltre 1.000.000 di libri sono disponibili per Amazon Kindle . Maggiori informazioni
| |||||||||||||||
Descrizione del libro
Descrizione prodotto
L'autore
Stanislas Dehaene teaches at the College de France and is Director of the Cognitive Neuroimaging Research Unit at INSERM.
Dettagli prodotto
|
Recensioni clienti
Non ci sono ancora recensioni di clienti su Amazon.it
5 stelle
4 stelle
3 stelle
2 stelle
1 stella
Le recensioni clienti più utili su Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.0 su 5 stelle
7 recensioni
20 di 20 persone hanno trovato utile la seguente recensione
4.0 su 5 stelle
How number is perceived and manipulated
3 maggio 2011
Di whiteelephant
- Pubblicato su Amazon.com
Formato:Brossura
The last twenty years have seen the rapid development of research on numerical cognition, and there is no one better to introduce it than Dehaene, a cognitive neuroscientist who has been at the experimental and theoretical center of it all. In this book, Dehaene introduces the respective numerical capacities of animals, infants, and adults (both healthy and impaired). He uses these fascinating studies to develop a theory of innate "number sense", sharpened by symbolic processing in educated humans. Throughout, Dehaene convincingly takes on personalities of researcher, educator, and philosopher, while taking us from chimpanzees to split-brain patients to isolated Amazonian villages. As a neuroscientist, I found the book most valuable for its comprehensive review of the literature of this subfield, however Dehaene was equally comfortable discussing educational and mathematical philosophy.
Unfortunately, this second edition comes across as a little disjointed. The fifteen years since the first edition's publication has seen an exponential growth in research, the vast majority of which supports Dehaene's contention. However, instead of bolstering the foundation of the book, Dehaene has settled on appending these studies into an additional chapter. Thus, the majority of the book comes across as a little dated and thin (e.g. older PET studies), with the majority of experimental evidence rifled through in one chapter. The book still makes for an informative read, if not quite as enjoyable as it could have been.
Unfortunately, this second edition comes across as a little disjointed. The fifteen years since the first edition's publication has seen an exponential growth in research, the vast majority of which supports Dehaene's contention. However, instead of bolstering the foundation of the book, Dehaene has settled on appending these studies into an additional chapter. Thus, the majority of the book comes across as a little dated and thin (e.g. older PET studies), with the majority of experimental evidence rifled through in one chapter. The book still makes for an informative read, if not quite as enjoyable as it could have been.
4.0 su 5 stelle
Very informative
16 giugno 2013
Di Andrew R. Glaze
- Pubblicato su Amazon.com
Formato:Formato Kindle|Acquisto verificato Amazon
The book was very informative and well researched. I think the author could town down his evolutionist discourse a bit though.
4.0 su 5 stelle
how the mind creates mathematics
5 maggio 2013
Di kaplan
- Pubblicato su Amazon.com
Formato:Brossura|Acquisto verificato Amazon
So far I am enjoying reading this book, very interesting. The book arrived very quickly as I was looking forward on receiving it.
›
Vai su Amazon.com per consultare tutte le 7 recensioni
4.0 su 5 stelle
