Abstract
Previous research has consistently shown that the left parietal cortex is critical for numerical processing, but the role of the right parietal lobe has been much less clear. This study used the intraoperative cortical electrical stimulation approach to investigate neural dissociation in the right parietal cortex for subtraction and multiplication. Results showed that multiplication (as well as picture naming) was not affected by the cortical electrical stimulation on all the targeted sites of the right parietal cortex as well as those of the right temporal cortex. In contrast, stimulation at three right parietal sites (two sites in the right inferior parietal lobule and one in the right angular gyrus) impaired performance on simple subtraction problems. This study provided the first evidence from an intraoperative cortical electrical stimulation study to show the dissociation of arithmetic operations in the right parietal cortex. This dissociation between subtraction and multiplication suggests that the right parietal cortex plays a more significant role in quantity processing (subtraction) than in verbal processing (multiplication) in numerical processing.
Highlights
Many neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies have been devoted to revealing neural substrates of human arithmetic ability
The present study used the technique of intraoperative cortical electrical stimulation to investigate the role of the right parietal cortex in numerical processing
Picture naming and multiplication were not affected by the cortical electrical stimulation on all the targeted sites of the right parietal cortex as well as the right temporal cortex
Summary
Many neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies have been devoted to revealing neural substrates of human arithmetic ability. The parietal cortex, especially the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), has been found to play a critical role in numerical processing Several lines of previous studies have consistently shown that the left parietal cortex is critical for numerical processing (e.g., Ashkenazi, Henik, Ifergane, & Shelef, 2008; Cohen Kadosh et al, 2005; Rickard et al, 2000; Takayama, Sugishita, Akiguchi, & Kimura, 1994; Warrington, 1982; Zago et al, 2008)
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