A functional MRI study of simple arithmetic—a comparison between children and adults

Neural substrates for forward and backward recitation of numbers and the alphabet: A close examination of the role of intraparietal sulcus and perisylvian areas

“…The activation of left angular gyrus has been found in previous research on arithmetic, which has been assumed as a result of verbal or phonological processing (Chochon et al, 1999;Dehaene et al, 1999;Lee, 2000;Delazer et al, 2005). That finding was not replicated in other related studies (Kawashima et al, 2004) as well as our study. Future research needs to explore reasons for these differential findings.…”

Event-related potentials of single-digit addition, subtraction, and multiplication

“…The average Talairach coordinates of activation were −41, −66, and 36. In addition, relative to other tasks (i.e., letter naming, eye fixation, perceptual motor control task, numbermagnitude comparison, or digit reading), single-digit multiplication activated the left inferior frontal gyrus 27,3;16,24;13,32) and the adjacent insula (Tarairach coordinates: −30, 18, 2) (Chochon et al, 1999;Kawashima et al, 2004;Richard et al, 2000;Zago et al, 2001). We averaged these Talairach coordinates to define another potential neural source for phonological processing in multiplication.…”

“…Consistent with the lesion studies, two fMRI studies have found that, compared to subtraction or numerical-magnitude comparison, multiplication elicited more activation in the left perisylvian language regions (either the left angular gyrus or the left inferior frontal gyrus) (e.g., Lee, 2000;Rickard et al, 2000). Several other neuroimaging studies, however, failed to replicate these results (Chochon, Cohen, Van de Moortele, & Dehaene, 1999;Dehaene et al, 1996;Hayashi, Ishii, Kitagaki, & Kazui, 2000;Kawashima et al, 2004;Kazui, Kitagaki, & Mori, 2000). One possible reason for these inconsistent findings is that PET and fMRI have poor temporal resolution and are not always sensitive enough to detect potential differences in a small time window among arithmetic operations.…”

“…Previous research has clearly documented that different arithmetic operations have different levels of difficulty. In general, multiplication has been found to be more difficult than other arithmetic operations (e.g., addition) or other number tasks (e.g., numerical-magnitude comparison) (e.g., Chochon et al, 1999;Kawashima et al, 2004;Zhou & Dong, 2003). To control for the potential confounding effect of task difficulty, we further compared "large" single-digit addition problems (with sums between 11 and 17) and "small" single-digit multiplication problems (with products between 6 and 24).…”

Agrammatic but numerate

“…In particular, the supramarginal and angular gyri are activated in tasks such as single-digit multiplication, where retrieval of verbally encoded information from memory is seen as central to performance (20,21). More anterior language zones, including Broca's area, are also activated in mathematical tasks (7,(22)(23)(24). The claim of a close neurocognitive association between language and mathematics also gains some support from the concurrence of calculation problems in language disorders such as aphasia (18,25).…”