Neural correlates of numbers and mathematical terms

Abstract

Numerical processing has been demonstrated to be subserved typically by the brain regions around the bilateral intraparietal sulcus (IPS). The goal of the current study was to investigate whether the processing of mathematical terms shared the same brain regions with numerical processing. Healthy adult participants performed semantic distance judgment tasks on five types of materials, including geometric terms, algebraic terms, linguistic terms, words for tools and other common objects, and Arabic numbers. Brain activation was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The results showed that geometric terms had greater activation than algebraic terms, linguistic terms and tool words in the horizontal IPS, but algebraic terms did not have greater activation than linguistic terms and tool words in this region. Arabic numbers showed greater activation than non-number materials (including geometric terms, algebraic terms, linguistic terms and tool words) in the bilateral IPS, right inferior frontal gyrus and bilateral middle frontal gyrus, but the non-number materials showed stronger activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus and left middle temporal gyrus. These results suggest that the brain area for the processing of numbers (the left IPS) seems to be involved in semantic processing of geometric terms, but not that of other mathematical terms such as algebraic terms. Both algebraic and geometric terms share similar brain organization with basic semantic processing in the left temporal and frontal regions.

Teacher-student neural coupling during teaching and learning

“…These regions include linguistic regions STS and STG extending to the temporal poles, and DMN regions including PMC, mPFC, and dlPFC. However, unlike during narrative storytelling, and in accordance with the scientific nature of our lecture, we also observed teacher-student alignment in bilateral SPL, which has been implicated in mental rotation, geometry, and mathematical symbols (Gogos et al, 2010;Prescott et al, 2010;Zhang et al, 2012;Harvey et al, 2013), as well as the manipulation and rearrangement of information in working memory (Koenigs et al, 2009). We also do not observe teacher-student coupling in bilateral TPJ, a region of the brain that is strongly implicated in mentalizing and theory of mind (Saxe and Kanwisher, 2003;Schilbach et al, 2008;Mars et al, 2012), suggesting that aspects of speaker-listener coupling are content-specific.…”

Individual structural differences in left inferior parietal area are associated with schoolchildrens' arithmetic scores

“…For example, the anterior IPS is assumed to play a crucial role in cognitive representation of numerical quantities (Dehaene et al, 2003; Zhang et al, 2012). A recently published meta-analysis study showed that number and calculation tasks elicited activity in such region as the inferior parietal lobule (Arsalidou and Taylor, 2011).…”

Functional Clustering of the Human Inferior Parietal Lobule by Whole-Brain Connectivity Mapping of Resting-State Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Signals

“…The IPL is known to be involved in the mathematical cognitive processing (Ansari, 2008;Nieder and Dehaene, 2009). The middle IPL, especially cluster 5, responds consistently to mathematical operations (Cohen et al, 2000;Cohen Kadosh et al, 2007;Delazer et al, 2003;Fulbright et al, 2000;Grabner et al, 2009;Kroger et al, 2008;Naccache and Dehaene, 2001;Piazza et al, 2007;Zhang et al, 2012b). On the other hand, the posterior IPL seems involved in the use of learned mathematics, as when comparing trained and untrained conditions (Delazer et al, 2003;Grabner et al, 2009), in contrast to the middle IPL.…”