http://mindhacks.com/2008/03/01/maths-and-the-numbers-game-in-the-brain/ Neuroscience and psychology news and views. Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:47:11 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://mindhacks.com/2008/03/01/maths-and-the-numbers-game-in-the-brain/#comment-6820 Sun, 02 Mar 2008 00:24:39 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2008/03/01/maths-and-the-numbers-game-in-the-brain/#comment-6820 Hey Vaughan, long time fan of Mindhacks here.
I work with a lot of brain injured people, and was doing some maths with a man who has Broca’s Aphasia last Monday. I found that whilst he could still do maths, he had great difficulty in finding the correct number, due to the “tip of the tongue” effect that Broca’s (Aphasiacs?) have with most words. He could do 4 + 4 = 8, but might say “Nine” instead.
The interesting thing was that if he had a number line, like 1-2-3-etc… in front of him, he could always find the correct number (as far as 20 anyway). My theory was that becaues of his Aphasia, he could no longer count subvocally in his mind, or map the concept of 8 to the word “Eight”. Given a visual aid, he could get the correct answer, which encouraged me to try and teach him to visualise a number line internally as a compensation strategy.
Unfortunately, like me, he says he’s never had a great visual imagination… perhaps he can improve this as his visual imagination is likely in his undamaged right hemisphere (he had a unilateral stroke)…
I have started to ramble now but thanks for the interesting post. There is always interesting psychology news on Mindhacks )

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