Yasemin Saplakoglu

So I actually it was funny because I had both groups kind of look at each other's results and I was like, what's going on here?

It's slightly different.

And they both said that they think, you know, their results are complementary, actually.

And the reason for the discrepancy was most likely just scale.

And, you know, they're hopeful that future experiments will be able to kind of tease apart, you know, what the nuances of this are.

Yeah, I think that, I mean, there's a lot of directions you can go from here.

Like, it's how the brain comprehends zero.

This was kind of the first step into that.

And now, you know, one of the groups, actually, they're hoping to go more in the direction of understanding how the brain comprehends absence.

Because they think that if they can kind of compare how the brain is processing zero and processing absence, they might be able to see how, like evolutionarily, how the steps toward understanding zero happen.

And then the other group, they're more interested in the numbers aspect of things.

So they are hoping to...

look more into some of these maybe stranger numbers.

But for example, like no one looked at the written word zero, which would be a really interesting thing to look at too.

Like would that look different in the brain than the digit zero or than it would for empty sets?

Right.

I think my big takeaway is how incredible and complicated and big the brain is.

I just I think my mind is still blown that we have neurons that are attuned to specific numbers and ways to comprehend these abstract, you know, ideas because numbers and zero especially is an abstraction.

And we somehow figured out a way to comprehend it, which is incredible to me.

Of course.