Dissociating neural correlates of cognitive components in mental calculation
Dissociating neural correlates of cognitive components in mental calculation
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DOI：
10.1093/cercor/11.4.350
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发表时间：
2001-04-01
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Kleinschmidt, A
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Gruber, O;Indefrey, P;Kleinschmidt, A
心算是一种复杂的认知操作，由一系列不同的功能过程组成。使用功能性磁共振成像（fMRI），我们映射的大脑活动在健康受试者执行算术任务和控制任务，唤起一个比较负荷的视觉建设性，语言，注意力和记忆功能。在计算过程中，以及非数学任务，类似的皮质网络组成的双边前额叶，运动前区和顶叶区域被激活，这表明大多数这些皮质区并不专门代表模块的计算，但支持更一般的认知操作，是工具，但不是特定的心算。计算和非数学任务之间的显着差异被发现在顶叶亚区，其中非算术数字或字母替换任务优先激活的上级顶叶小叶，而计算主要引起激活的左侧背角回和内侧顶叶皮质。我们解释后者的激活，以反映子过程的卑微的计算，涉及到处理的数值表示在精确计算和算术事实检索。最后，我们发现，更复杂的计算任务，包括计算规则的应用增加了活动，在左下额叶区，是已知的，以维护语言和工作记忆功能。总之，这些发现有助于将计算的特定认知操作嵌入到提供所需工具组件集的神经框架中。这一结果可能进一步为计算的认知建模提供信息，并增加了对患者神经心理缺陷模式的理解。
Mental calculation is a complex cognitive operation that is composed of a set of distinct functional processes. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we mapped brain activity in healthy subjects performing arithmetical tasks and control tasks evoking a comparable load on visuo-constructive, linguistic, attentional and mnemonic functions. During calculation, as well as non-mathematical tasks, similar cortical networks consisting of bilateral prefrontal, premotor and parietal regions were activated, suggesting that most of these cortical areas do not exclusively represent modules for calculation but support more general cognitive operations that are instrumental but not specific to mental arithmetic. Significant differences between calculation and the non-mathematical tasks were found in parietal sub-regions, where non-arithmetic number or letter substitution tasks preferentially activated the superior parietal lobules whereas calculation predominantly elicited activation of the left dorsal angular gyrus and the medial parietal cortices. We interpret the latter activations to reflect sub-processes of menial calculation that are related to the processing of numerical representations during exact calculation and to arithmetical fact retrieval. Finally, we found that more complex calculation tasks involving the application of calculation rules increased activity in left inferior frontal areas that are known to subserve linguistic and working memory functions. Taken together, these findings help to embed the specific cognitive operation of calculation into a neural framework that provides the required set of instrumental components. This result may further inform the cognitive modeling of calculation and adds to the understanding of neuropsychological deficit patterns in patients.