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Each episode of the Physiological Reviews podcast features commentary and discussion of newly published articles in the journal, which provides state-of-the-art, comprehensive, and high-impact coverage of timely issues in the physiological and biomedical sciences. Physiological Reviews articles appeal to physiologists, neuroscientists, cell biologists, biophysicists, and clinicians with special interest in pathophysiology. The journal is very useful in teaching and research because it provides non-biased and clearly written updates on important developments.
Episodes
Tuesday May 20, 2025
Tuesday May 20, 2025
In this episode, Dr. Jan Born (University of Tübingen) interviews his colleague and author Dr. Andreas Nieder (University of Tübingen) about his recent Review in Physiological Reviews on mathematical reasoning that incorporates neurobiology, comparative physiology, and neurophysiology. Mathematical skills can be described as falling into symbolic (arithmetic, number theory) and non-symbolic (set size) representations of numerical quantities. Infants as young as 2 days old can discriminate set size, for example, distinguishing between four dots and eight dots. And then, of course, there is the fascinating concept of zero, which is “rather like the eccentric uncle in the series of numbers,” as Dr. Nieder says. Understanding the concept of zero as the absence of something, represented as a number, is critical to understanding all other numbers. How does all of this work in the brain? Listen and find out.
Andreas Nieder The calculating brain Physiological Reviews, published October 25, 2024. DOI: 10.1152/physrev.00014.2024