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Mind

Fear of predators may have helped us conceptualise the idea of zero

A fear of predators may have helped many animals recognise when they weren't there. Now, it seems humans built on this understanding of absence to utilise the concept of "zero"

By James Woodford

1 March 2024

Zeros are critical to mathematics, astronomy and engineering

Carol Yepes / Getty

The human brain may have learned to comprehend the figure zero and apply it to our lives by making a primitive neural pathway more sophisticated. Better understanding this could help people who struggle to understand numbers after a stroke.

Zeros are used in many aspects of society, from astronomy and engineering to accounting and literature. To understand the figure’s origin, Benjy Barnett and Steve Fleming at University College London used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to record the magnetic fields produced by 29 people’s brains while they completed two tasks.…

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