Research on Event Related Potential Elicited by Number Recognizing and Arithmetic Calculating

Abstract

To investigate the event related potentials (ERPs) elicited by number recognizing and arithmetic calculating stimuli. 16 undergraduate students were taken part in the research. Three tasks including number recognizing, simple subtracting and complex arithmetic calculating were designed. Electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded during each task. ERPs were extracted from EEG data, and then the features of ERPs were analyzed. Brain electrical activity mappings (BEAM) was used to find out active area related with each task. ERPs evoked by number recognizing and calculating have positive and negative components. Both of them have similar wave form. BEAM shows that three tasks all activate the areas in parietal lobe. As the difficulty of the calculation increasing, more areas in brain cortex are activated. The amplitude of P300 in the frontal region increase with the task difficulties. The early ERPs components reflect mental processes for identification of physical attributes of digits. Parietal lobe is the function domain of event related with number. In calculating course, left parietal area is more active than right.