The Nature vs. Nurture Debate: Unraveling the Origins of Human Intelligence

Stanford researchers at the Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) are using biologically inspired neural architecture to understand the emergence of number sense in the human brain. By studying the neural representations in cortical layers V1, V2, V3, and the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), they found that visual numerosity and quantity-sensitive neurons can spontaneously emerge in deep neural networks. The researchers also investigated how numerical representations develop in children, finding that small numbers are learned through non-symbolic representations, while large numbers are learned through counting and arithmetic principles. This research has important implications for understanding the development of number sense and learning in children.