A review states that fish help researchers track down the origins of how brains compute mathematics. The international team reviewed more than 200 publications and found that fish use parts of their brains similar to mammals and birds. These findings could eventually help treat human diseases that impair the ability to do math because of the specific brain circuitry that makes number processing possible.
Prof. Giorgio Vallortigara of the University of Trento said that fish have a sense of quantity. The zebrafish is a great model for studying the sense of quantity. It could have important implications for diseases that impair math skills in up to six percent of children.
There are lessons from fish.
A fish's survival depends on estimating quantity. Vallortigara and his team started with a collection of studies showing that fish are better at differentiating between larger and smaller quantities than mammals or birds.
Vallortigara's team found that they needed to look more closely at the cellular and genetic levels to understand how fish gauge quantity. Brain scans have shown that fish have the same parts of their brains as other animals.
Vallortigara said that an open issue is whether numerical quantities are computed as an abstract property or whether animals always think about numbers on the basis of other cues from their surroundings. Experiments show that fish use pure numerousness.
The evolution of mathematics.
Other studies have been able to find the specific neurons that form the circuits that process quantity. Genetic analyses show how similar these strategies are to one another.
Vallortigara said that a big ongoing question is whether the mechanisms for quantity cognition in the different parts of the animal kingdom evolved from a common ancestor or separately.
Many researchers have been using zebrafish to better understand learning disabilities in humans because the model system is close to humans.
More information: Andrea Messina et al, Quantity as a fish views it: Behavior and neurobiology, Frontiers in Neuroanatomy (2022). DOI: 10.3389/fnana.2022.943504, www.frontiersin.org/articles/1 … ana.2022.943504/full
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