Math brain

“… I think so much mathematics … so much mathematics is actually visual, and – I’m going to be controversial here –  I think our brains, our mammalian brains, are primarily visual as well and pictures speak a thousand words and spawn 10,000 ideas.”

Looking for Joy in Mathematics: An Interview with James Tanton, 29:23-29:41

A distinct cortical network for mathematical knowledge in the human brain, Marie Amalric &  Stanislas Dehaene (2019)

“Our findings support the hypothesis that mathematical concepts form a domain-specific area of knowledge with a distinct cortical substrate” (p.29)

“… we found that even rote algebraic facts, such as knowledge that , activated the math-responsive network. This result suggests that routinized algebraic expressions are not stored in rote verbal form (unlike, say, multiplication tables), but involve an actual manipulation of mathematical concepts …” (p. 30)