Arithmetic procedural knowledge: A cortico-subcortical circuit

Abstract

The disturbances of arithmetic procedural knowledge form a heterogeneous picture, in which we can distinguish “memory” impairments and “monitoring” problems. Patients with “memory” disturbances reported in the literature present left parietal lesions, while “monitoring” impairments have been assumed to be due to frontal damage. Procedural knowledge has been less investigated in basal ganglia lesions, in which there has been no analysis of procedural impairments. The present study investigates and compares the patterns of acalculia in two patients, one with a left parietal lesion and the other with a left basal ganglia lesion. The patients were tested on a broad range of neuropsychological abilities, with the main focus on number processing and calculation. The results show many similarities between their deficits, with some difficulties in simple arithmetic, arithmetical rules and mental and written complex calculations. The errors made in complex mental and written calculations were due to memory-based procedural impairments in both patients. These findings, corroborated with other studies reported in the literature, suggest the existence of a fronto-parieto-subcortical circuit responsible for arithmetic complex calculations and that procedural knowledge relies on a visuo-spatial sketchpad that contains a representation of each sub-step of the procedure.