Visualizing Cortical Activation during Mental Calculation with Functional MRI

Rueckert, Linda; Lange, Nicholas; Partiot, Arnaud; Appollonio, Ildebrando; Litvan, Irene; Bihan, Denis Le; Grafman, Jordan

doi:10.1006/nimg.1996.0011

Cited by 185 publications

(115 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…The involvement of parietal cortex in number processing was initially discovered on the basis of lesion data (Gerstmann, 1940;Hécaen, Angelergues, & Houillier, 1961;Henschen, 1919). Subsequently, a systematic activation of the parietal lobes during calculation, together with precentral and prefrontal cortices, was discovered (Roland & Friberg, 1985) and extensively replicated using positron emission tomography (PET) Pesenti, Thioux, Seron, & De Volder, 2000;Zago, Pesenti, Mellet, Crivello, Mazoyer, & Tzourio-Mazoyer, 2001) and later fMRI (Burbaud, Camus, Guehl, Bioulac, Caille, & Allard, 1999;Rueckert et al, 1996). On this basis, some of us proposed that the parietal lobe contributes to the representation of numerical quantity on a mental "number line" .…”

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confidence: 99%

Three Parietal Circuits for Number Processing

Dehaene

Piazza

Pinel

et al. 2003

Cognitive Neuropsychology

2,156

208

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Did evolution endow the human brain with a predisposition to represent and acquire knowledge about numbers? Although the parietal lobe has been suggested as a potential substrate for a domain-specific representation of quantities, it is also engaged in verbal, spatial, and attentional functions that may contribute to calculation. To clarify the organisation of number-related processes in the parietal lobe, we examine the three-dimensional intersection of fMRI activations during various numerical tasks, and also review the corresponding neuropsychological evidence. On this basis, we propose a tentative tripartite organisation. The horizontal segment of the intraparietal sulcus (HIPS) appears as a plausible candidate for domain specificity: It is systematically activated whenever numbers are manipulated, independently of number notation, and with increasing activation as the task puts greater emphasis on quantity processing. Depending on task demands, we speculate that this core quantity system, analogous to an internal "number line," can be supplemented by two other circuits. A left angular gyrus area, in connection with other left-hemispheric perisylvian areas, supports the manipulation of numbers in verbal form. Finally, a bilateral posterior superior parietal system supports attentional orientation on the mental number line, just like on any other spatial dimension.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Three Parietal Circuits for Number Processing

Dehaene

Piazza

Pinel

et al. 2003

Cognitive Neuropsychology

2,156

208

2,149

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…We have postulated that a special role is devoted to cortico-subcortical loops in retrieving verbal automatic associations such as rote arithmetic facts. Second, functional imaging studies in normal subjects and data from braindamaged patients suggest that bilateral cortical regions centred on the intraparietal sulcus play a central role in number processing [7,16,22,34,35]. Studies of patients with acalculia following lesions in the left intraparietal region, frequently in the context of Gerstmann's syndrome, show that the numerical de®cit aects primarily quantity manipulations, while verbal routines such as reading aloud or writing to dictation, may be entirely preserved [19,20,24,38,39].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language and calculation within the parietal lobe: a combined cognitive, anatomical and fMRI study

Cohen¹,

Dehaene

Chochon³

et al. 2000

Neuropsychologia

217

128

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We report the case of a patient (ATH) who suered from aphasia, deep dyslexia, and acalculia, following a lesion in her left perisylvian area. She showed a severe impairment in all tasks involving numbers in a verbal format, such as reading aloud, writing to dictation, or responding verbally to questions of numerical knowledge. In contrast, her ability to manipulate nonverbal representations of numbers, i.e., Arabic numerals and quantities, was comparatively well preserved, as evidenced for instance in number comparison or number bisection tasks. This dissociated impairment of verbal and non-verbal numerical abilities entailed a dierential impairment of the four arithmetic operations. ATH performed much better with subtraction and addition, that can be solved on the basis of quantity manipulation, than with multiplication and division problems, that are commonly solved by retrieving stored verbal sequences. The brain lesion aected the classical language areas, but spared a subset of the left inferior parietal lobule that was active during calculation tasks, as demonstrated with functional MRI. Finally, the relative preservation of subtraction versus multiplication may be related to the fact that subtraction activated the intact right parietal lobe, while multiplication activated predominantly left-sided areas. 7

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“…First, the PFC is particularly engaged during the processing of arithmetic operations requiring mathematical rules in humans (18)(19)(20)(21)(22), and damage to the PFC impairs reasoning with quantities (23)(24)(25). Second, PFC neurons can flexibly group information into behaviorally meaningful categories according to task demands (26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32).…”

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confidence: 99%

Basic mathematical rules are encoded by primate prefrontal cortex neurons

Bongard

Nieder

2010

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Mathematics is based on highly abstract principles, or rules, of how to structure, process, and evaluate numerical information. If and how mathematical rules can be represented by single neurons, however, has remained elusive. We therefore recorded the activity of individual prefrontal cortex (PFC) neurons in rhesus monkeys required to switch flexibly between "greater than" and "less than" rules. The monkeys performed this task with different numerical quantities and generalized to set sizes that had not been presented previously, indicating that they had learned an abstract mathematical principle. The most prevalent activity recorded from randomly selected PFC neurons reflected the mathematical rules; purely sensory-and memory-related activity was almost absent. These data show that single PFC neurons have the capacity to represent flexible operations on most abstract numerical quantities. Our findings support PFC network models implementing specific "rule-coding" units that control the flow of information between segregated input, memory, and output layers. We speculate that these neuronal circuits in the monkey lateral PFC could readily have been adopted in the course of primate evolution for syntactic processing of numbers in formalized mathematical systems.mathematics | monkey | number | single cell I ntelligent behavior requires strategic processing of numbers and abstract quantity information in accordance with internally maintained goals. In many everyday situations, our decisions on quantities are guided by mathematical rules applied to them, and mathematical principles also play a major role in our scientifically and technologically advanced culture (1-5). Nonhuman primates can perform basic arithmetic tasks on a par with college students, however, suggesting an evolutionarily primitive system for nonverbal mathematical thinking shared by man and monkey (6).The semantic aspect of numerical quantity is represented by neurons in a frontoparietal cortical network, with the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) as the key node (7). Neurons in macaque IPS (8-10) and prefrontal cortex (PFC) (11-14) readily encode numerosities from visual displays and memorize them during delay periods. In humans, the detection of nonsymbolic numerosities and symbolic number information activates these sites in functional imaging studies (7,(15)(16)(17). Although the fundus of the IPS constitutes the first cortical site where quantities are extracted from sensory input, these quantities need to be processed further by integrating different sources of external and internal information to gain control over behavior. To that aim, numerical information from the IPS seems to be conveyed to the PFC, which operates on a higher hierarchy level (14).We thus hypothesized that neurons in the PFC are ideally positioned to implement abstract response strategies required for basic mathematical operations. First, the PFC is particularly engaged during the processing of arithmetic operations requiring mathematical rules in humans (18)(19)(20)(21)(22), ...

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Visualizing Cortical Activation during Mental Calculation with Functional MRI

Cited by 185 publications

References 34 publications

Three Parietal Circuits for Number Processing

Three Parietal Circuits for Number Processing

Language and calculation within the parietal lobe: a combined cognitive, anatomical and fMRI study

Basic mathematical rules are encoded by primate prefrontal cortex neurons

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