Andreas Nieder | “How monkeys and crows crunch numbers”

Systems and cognitive neuroscience \ Manfred Eigen lecture theatre

Mammals and birds diverged roughly 360 million years ago. Despite this vast evolutionary distance, both groups include species with advanced cognitive abilities, such as monkeys and crows. These animals can categorize abstract numbers, hold and manipulate them in working memory, and use quantity information to guide deliberate decisions. Their shared numerical skills provide a striking example of convergent evolution of intelligence. This talk explores the behavioral and neural bases of numerical cognition in monkeys and crows. The findings suggest that evolution often reaches similar solutions to the same cognitive problems, though it can also follow different paths.

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