{"id":2678,"date":"2005-02-26T14:07:14","date_gmt":"2005-02-26T19:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2005\/02\/26\/2678.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:48:07","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:48:07","slug":"give-me-the-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2005\/02\/26\/give-me-the-brain\/","title":{"rendered":"Give me the Brain!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is an odd but interesting story that may interest my Gentle Readers. I came across it through Clive Thompson’s Collision Detection<\/a>, which pointed to a BBC article<\/a>, but I found this nature.com<\/a> article clearer. And, of course, for thems as understand such things, the abstract<\/a> is available on-line from the National Academy of Sciences, and the entire article “Agrammatic but numerate” is available for a small fee (or through your university, research institution, or bowling league).\n

Anyway, it seems that Rosemary Varley and some colleagues at the University of Sheffield experimented with three aphasic men (with large left-hemisphere perisylvian lesions)(I think I went to school with Perry Sylvian) who despite severe grammatical impairment were able to parse mathematical ‘sentences’. That is, the men couldn’t easily differentiate subject and object in sentences such as ‘the girl chased the boy’ or ‘the hunter ate the lion’ but were able to decode such expressions as ‘30\/90’ or ‘52-11’ correctly and consistently. The lesions that prevent reading not only don’t prevent calculating, but don’t prevent reading in math.\n

Well, and this surprises me. When I read an equation (say, x=(90 - [(3 + 17) * 3]), I think I read it in words. The translation is not word-for-word, but I would say something like “x is ninety less the amount of three plus seventeen, times three.” Or, more likely, I’d look at it and say “x is ninety minus three times three-plus-seventeen.” Either of those would use the part of the brain that in these fellows doesn’t function. Now, when I do the actual arithmetic, I don’t do it in words, I think, although it’s hard to tell. At any rate, it seems that it is possible to do the arithmetic without doing the language. Which is just cool. Even if it’s just a workaround that develops when the normal way doesn’t work. Perhaps particularly if it’s such a workaround.\n

In addition to just being cool, the experiment calls into (theoretical) question the attitude that some people take that language itself is what makes us human, that is, that human-ness and language are pretty much identical. Or at least that the things we think of as human, such as ... oh, self-awareness, the ability to reason, to use complex tools, to build for others, to pray, to negotiate, to make jokes, to imagine, to invent, to remember, the whole package, all those things are possible (and perhaps inevitable) simply because of language. I’ve been skeptical about this, although of course it’s a powerfully Scriptural view of humanity. Anyway, this doesn’t destroy that attitude (the people in question developed the lesions well after learning arithmetic and algebra, so if they are able to use the acquired skills without language, it doesn’t mean they could have acquired them without language, etc, etc), but it does bring a new light on its assumptions and conclusions.\n

Plus, of course, it’s just cool.\n

Thank you,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is an odd but interesting story that may interest my Gentle Readers. I came across it through Clive Thompson\u2019s Collision Detection, which pointed to a BBC article, but I found this nature.com article clearer. And, of course, for thems…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2678"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17319,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2678\/revisions\/17319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}