fMRI MAPS MATH AND ATTENTION CIRCUITS [ back to What's New ]
Using bi-lingual college students as subjects neuro-scientist Stanislas Dehaene of NIH and cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Spelke of MIT ascertained the existence of two separate brain circuits for mathematical operations. They found an intuitive non-verbal sense of such things as relative size, relative proportion and approximation of quantities in both parietal lobes. They found a language based capacity for precise calculations in the left frontal lobe in the vicinity of Broca's area which articulates speech. In making this discovery they used superfast imaging of  brain activity (fMRI) while students made different kinds of math calculations, precise and approximate. This was reported in the May 1999 issue of Science. The authors state that many other animals have a non-verbal sense of quantity, but humans have taken math to a higher level because they synergistically use this capacity with the capacity for precise calculation using language. This knowledge may be of use now, or someday, to neuropsychologists trying to find a connection between brain injury and lost math ability, and trying to compensate for the loss.

Meanwhile at the Medical College of Wisconsin, a team of researchers led by Edgard DeYoe, a professor of cellular biology and neurobiology, used fMRI to map rapid shifting of attention in frontal lobe circuits. While volunteers stared at a stationary grid pattern, and new visual objects were introduced, the researchers were able to watch and track different areas of the frontal lobes light up on the brain imaging display. News of the discovery was released in May 1999. While Dr. DeYoe is primarily interested in using his maps to understand what has gone wrong with the brain in ADHD (attention deficit disorder), the technique and the data may be useful to persons with brain injuries, many of whom sustain contusions and/or diffuse shearing lesions to the frontal lobes with loss of capacity for multi-tasking, inability to ignore distractions and other features of executive function disorder.