Ansari will speak at 4 p.m. on Wed., Jan. 16, 2019, in 1220 MRB III.
The University of Western Ontario’s Daniel Ansari will deliver the lecture “Number Symbols in Brain and Mind,” as part of the Educational Neuroscience Speaker Series at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of education and human development.
The event takes place at 4 p.m. Jan. 16, in 1220 MRB III, and is sponsored by Peabody College, Vanderbilt Brain Institute and Vanderbilt Kennedy Center.
Daniel Ansari is a professor and Canada Research Chair in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology and the Brain & Mind Institute at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, where he heads the Numerical Cognition Laboratory.
In his talk, Ansari will challenge the common assumption that symbols for numbers acquire their meaning by being mapped onto the pre-existing, phylogenetically ancient system for the approximate representation of non-symbolic numbers over the course of learning and development. He will present a series of behavioral and neuroimaging studies with both children and adults that demonstrate that symbolic and non-symbolic processing of number is dissociated at both the behavioral and brain levels of analysis. He will discuss the implications for children with mathematical learning disorders, such as developmental dyscalculia.
The event is free and open to the public.