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Many primates are capable of basic math and pre-verbal “number sense,” but it’s the use of language to explain abstractions that allows humans to take math to much higher levels, says a Duke University expert.

Elizabeth Brannon, an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke, studies how human adults and infants, lemurs and monkeys think about numbers without using language. Her goal is to identify brain systems that support number sense and determine how this cognitive skill develops.

“Number is one of the more abstract domains of cognition: Three coins and three loaves of bread are very different concepts,” Brannon said in a Duke news release. “Yet, many studies show that babies, even in the first year of life, can tell the difference between quantities.”

She’s found that both human infants and macaque monkeys who’ve seen the same number of objects repeated in different-looking sets recognize when there’s a new number of objects. She also found that college students and macaque have similar speed and accuracy when doing a rough sort of math by summing sets of objects without actually counting them.

It might come as no surprise that nonhuman primates have some fundamental sense of numbers.

“There are all sorts of reasons why number would be useful for nonhuman animals in the wild,” Brannon said. “In foraging situations, animals need to make decisions about how long to stay in a given patch of food and when to move on. Territorial animals may need to assess the number of individuals in their own group relative to competing groups to decide whether to stand their ground or retreat.”

Learning more about the biological basis of number sense might help early childhood educators, said Brannon, who’s currently trying to find out how the human brain changes to accommodate symbolism as a child learns the names of numbers and starts to understand more abstract math concepts.

“If the nonverbal number sense is really providing a critical foundation for math achievement, then this will suggest teaching methods that provide more grounding in the nonverbal quantity system,” she said.

Brannon was to appear Friday on a panel at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

If you ignore physical workout and think that brain-training games would hold back the onset of mental decline as you age, do think again, for researchers have claimed that they could do more harm than good.A new study, published in the ‘Alzheimer’s & Dementia’ journal, has suggested that if healthy older users neglect the proven benefits of physical exercise in favour of the popular games then they could be harming their health.

An international team, which carried out the study, has found “no evidence” that brain exercise programmes “delay or slow progression of cognitive changes in healthy elderly”.

In fact, the researchers came to the conclusion after looking at trials undertaken since 1992 on the impact of brain exercises – known as “cognitive training” – on old people.

They found that few trials met their criteria and those that did were often limited or lacking in follow-up.

And, the study concluded that more research is needed into the medium and long-term impact of brain training games which are often advertised in high profile campaigns fronted by Nicole Kidman, Julie Walters and Patrick Stewart. According to lead researcher Peter Snyder, a global business has developed in brain-training products without any robust proof that they worked.”Brain ageing products sold today can be a financial drain, decrease participation in more proven effective life-style interventions, like exercise,” Prof Snyder of Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, said.

Some products have actually been marketed as weapons in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease, but they could also give false hope to the “worried well” about chances of holding back the onset of mental decline, he said.

Neil Hunt, Chief Executive of the Alzheimer’s Society, told ‘Daily Mail’: “One million people will develop dementia in the next 10 years so there is a desperate need to find ways to prevent dementia.

“The idea that ‘brain training’ may prevent cognitive decline is extremely attractive, but worryingly there is only very limited evidence.

“Currently the best evidence is that what is good for your heart is good for your head so eating plenty of fruit and vegetables; taking regular exercise and checking cholesterol will all help reduce your risk.”

After undergoing surgery to remove part of the colon because of cancer, morbidly obese patients face higher complication rates than do normal-weight patients, according to a new report.

In a study of 3,200 colon cancer patients, Dr. Ryan P. Merkow from the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine in Aurora, Colorado, and colleagues found that while the risk of post-op complications was high for overweight and obese patients, the highest risk was for morbidly obese patients — those with a body mass index or BMI of 35 and higher.

Specifically, morbidly obese patients were significantly more likely than were normal-weight patients to develop infections of the surgical site, wounds that didn’t heal properly, a blood clot to the lungs, and kidney failure, the investigators report in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

“We believe,” Merkow told Reuters Health, “in this subset of patients, quality improvement initiatives should focus on these particular complications.”

Overall, the odds of having any complication was 75 percent higher for morbidly obese patients and 29 percent higher for overweight patients, compared with normal-weight patients.

In contrast, the investigators say, BMI had no significant impact on the risk of dying in the 30 days after surgery.