Newborns display innate neural sense of numbers

Suomi

A new study has found that babies possess the brain mechanisms for a basic sense of numbers within days of birth. Researchers used EEG recordings to show how newborns distinguish between different quantities. The findings provide the first neural evidence for this innate ability.

Researchers at the University of Trento in Italy fitted 21 newborns aged between 0 and 3 days with EEG caps to monitor brain activity. The babies heard recordings of repeated syllables in groups of four or 12 while viewing matching or mismatched sets of dots.

Electrical activity decreased in the parietotemporal area when the number of dots aligned with the syllables. Activity increased with mismatched quantities, indicating repetition suppression similar to patterns seen in adults.

Marco Buiatti, who led the study, noted that this ability offers evolutionary advantages for survival tasks such as distinguishing predators or food items. The work was posted on bioRxiv in May 2026.

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