Functional dissociations between four basic arithmetic operations in the human posterior parietal cortex: A cytoarchitectonic mapping study

NEUROPSYCHOLOGIA

卷:49

Article

Rosenberg-Lee, Miriam¹  Chang, Ting Ting^1,5  Young, Christina B.¹  Wu, Sarah¹  Menon, Vinod^1,2,3,4 

[1] Stanford Univ, Sch Med, Dept Psychiat & Behav Sci, Stanford, CA 94305 USA

[2] Stanford Univ, Sch Med, Program Neurosci, Stanford, CA 94305 USA

[3] Stanford Univ, Sch Med, Symbol Syst Program, Stanford, CA 94305 USA

[4] Stanford Univ, Sch Med, Dept Neurol & Neurol Sci, Stanford, CA 94305 USA

[5] Natl Yang Ming Univ, Inst Neurosci, Taipei 112, Taiwan

关键词: Arithmetic;    Posterior parietal cortex;    Cytoarchitectonics;    Intraparietal sulcus;    Angular gyrus;    Superior parietal lobule;    Addition;    Subtraction;    Multiplication;    Division;    Retrieval;    Calculation;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.04.035

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

Although lesion studies over the past several decades have focused on functional dissociations in posterior parietal cortex (PPC) during arithmetic, no consistent view has emerged of its differential involvement in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. To circumvent problems with poor anatomical localization, we examined functional overlap and dissociations in cytoarchitectonically defined subdivisions of the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), superior parietal lobule (SPL) and angular gyrus (AG), across these four operations. Compared to a number identification control task, all operations except addition, showed a consistent profile of left posterior IPS activation and deactivation in the right posterior AG. Multiplication and subtraction differed significantly in right, but not left, IPS and AG activity, challenging the view that the left AG differentially subserves retrieval during multiplication. Although addition and multiplication both rely on retrieval, multiplication evoked significantly greater activation in right posterior IPS, as well as the prefrontal cortex, lingual and fusiform gyri, demonstrating that addition and multiplication engage different brain processes. Comparison of PPC responses to the two pairs of inverse operations: division versus multiplication and subtraction versus addition revealed greater activation of left lateral SPL during division, suggesting that processing inverse relations is operation specific. Our findings demonstrate that individual IPS, SPL and AG subdivisions are differentially modulated by the four arithmetic operations and they point to significant functional heterogeneity and individual differences in activation and deactivation within the PPC. Critically, these effects are related to retrieval, calculation and inversion, the three key cognitive processes that are differentially engaged by arithmetic operations. Our findings point to distribute representation of these processes in the human PPC and also help explain why lesion and previous imaging studies have yielded inconsistent findings. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

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