Numerical and non-numerical ordinality processing in children with and without developmental dyscalculia: Evidence from fMRI

Abstract Ordinality is – beyond numerical magnitude (i.e., quantity) – an important characteristic of the number system. There is converging empirical evidence that (intra)parietal brain regions mediate number magnitude processing. Furthermore, recent findings suggest that the human intraparietal sulcus (IPS) supports magnitude and ordinality in a domain-general way. However, the latter findings are derived from adult studies and with respect to children (i.e., developing brain systems) both the neural correlates of ordinality processing and the precise role of the IPS (domain-general vs. domain-specific) in ordinality processing are thus far unknown. The present study aims at filling this gap by employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate numerical and non-numerical ordinality knowledge in children with and without developmental dyscalculia. In children (without DD) processing of numerical and non-numerical ordinality alike is supported by (intra)parietal cortex, thus extending the notion of a domain-general (intra)parietal cortex to developing brain systems. Moreover, activation extents in response to numerical ordinality processing differ significantly between children with and without dyscalculia in inferior parietal regions (supramarginal gyrus and IPS).

[1]  S. Dehaene,et al.  THREE PARIETAL CIRCUITS FOR NUMBER PROCESSING , 2003, Cognitive neuropsychology.

[2]  Guilherme Wood,et al.  A developmental fMRI study of nonsymbolic numerical and spatial processing , 2008, Cortex.

[3]  Vincent Walsh.  A theory of magnitude: common cortical metrics of time, space and quantity , 2003, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[4]  G. Fink,et al.  REVIEW: The functional organization of the intraparietal sulcus in humans and monkeys , 2005, Journal of anatomy.

[5]  H. Nuerk,et al.  Numerical development: current issues and future perspectives , 2005 .

[6]  Avishai Henik,et al.  Developmental Dyscalculia: heterogeneity might not mean different mechanisms , 2009, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[7]  Elizabeth M. Brannon,et al.  Beyond the number domain , 2009, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[8]  E. J. Carter,et al.  Functional Imaging of Numerical Processing in Adults and 4-y-Old Children , 2006, PLoS biology.

[9]  Franz Petermann,et al.  Hamburg-Wechsler-Intelligenztest für Kinder - IV , 2007 .

[10]  N. Logothetis.  The Underpinnings of the BOLD Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Signal , 2003, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[11]  Timothy Edward John Behrens,et al.  Response-Selection-Related Parietal Activation during Number Comparison , 2004, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[12]  Marie-Pascale Noël,et al.  Neural Correlates of Symbolic Number Comparison in Developmental Dyscalculia , 2010, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[13]  Brian Butterworth,et al.  Developmental dyscalculia and basic numerical capacities: a study of 8–9-year-old students , 2004, Cognition.

[14]  Roi Cohen Kadosh,et al.  Are numbers special? An overview of chronometric, neuroimaging, developmental and comparative studies of magnitude representation , 2008, Progress in Neurobiology.

[15]  Donna Coch,et al.  Human Behavior, Learning, and the Developing Brain: Typical Development. , 2010 .

[16]  J. Talairach,et al.  Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain: 3-Dimensional Proportional System: An Approach to Cerebral Imaging , 1988 .

[17]  Stanislas Dehaene,et al.  Cerebral Pathways for Calculation: Double Dissociation between Rote Verbal and Quantitative Knowledge of Arithmetic , 1997, Cortex.

[18]  Avishai Henik,et al.  Automatic activation of internal magnitudes: a study of developmental dyscalculia. , 2005, Neuropsychology.

[19]  Stefan Heim,et al.  Are numbers special? Comparing the generation of verbal materials from ordered categories (months) to numbers and other categories (animals) in an fMRI study , 2008, Human brain mapping.

[20]  G. Orban,et al.  Processing of Abstract Ordinal Knowledge in the Horizontal Segment of the Intraparietal Sulcus , 2007, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[21]  Florian Koppelstaetter,et al.  Neural correlates of the number–size interference task in children , 2006, Neuroreport.

[22]  Daniel Ansari,et al.  Age-related Changes in the Activation of the Intraparietal Sulcus during Nonsymbolic Magnitude Processing: An Event-related Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study , 2006, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[23]  Brian Butterworth,et al.  Number Forms in the Brain , 2008, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[24]  V Menon,et al.  Cerebral Cortex doi:10.1093/cercor/bhi055 Developmental Changes in Mental Arithmetic: Evidence for Increased Functional Specialization in the Left Inferior Parietal Cortex , 2005 .

[25]  Elizabeth M Brannon,et al.  The development of ordinal numerical knowledge in infancy , 2002, Cognition.

[26]  A. Nieder.  Counting on neurons: the neurobiology of numerical competence , 2005, Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

[27]  K. Kucian,et al.  Impaired neural networks for approximate calculation in dyscalculic children: a functional MRI study , 2006, Behavioral and Brain Functions.

[28]  N. Kanwisher,et al.  Numerical Magnitude in the Human Parietal Lobe Tests of Representational Generality and Domain Specificity , 2004, Neuron.

[29]  Gavin R. Price,et al.  Impaired parietal magnitude processing in developmental dyscalculia , 2007, Current Biology.

[30]  Roberto Cabeza,et al.  Role of parietal regions in episodic memory retrieval: The dual attentional processes hypothesis , 2008, Neuropsychologia.