The innate ability to cope with mathematics : A comparative fMRI study of children's and adults' neural activity during non-symbolic mathematical tasks

Abstract: Humans as well as animals are born with a number sense, an innate ability to make approximations (Dehaene, 1997). However, low numeracy is an issue today and have a larger impact on the individuals lives than poor reading abilities (Parsons & Bynner, 2006). To be able to understand the cause of developmental dyscalculia the fully functional brain coping with numbers must be further investigated. The aim of this study is hence to examine how the number sense develop during maturation. Seven children and seven adults (all healthy) have participated in this neuro imaging study. The participants were required to perform a non-symbolic mathematic task and a control task both outside and within the scanner. The results indicate a transition of active areas in the brain during maturation. In the children prefrontal areas were recruited, and for the adults the activation was primarily found in the parietal cortex. These findings, despite low statistical power indicates a shift of neural activity from a more cognitive demanding task into an automated task. Further studies will have to replicate the experiment to validate the findings of this study.