'Math neurons' identified in the brain
When performing calculations, some neurons are active when adding, others
when subtracting

Date:
February 14, 2022
Source:
University of Bonn
Summary:
The brain has neurons that fire specifically during certain
mathematical operations. The findings indicate that some of the
neurons detected are active exclusively during additions, while
others are active during subtractions. They respond in the same
manner whether the calculation instruction is written down as a
word or a symbol.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== [Illustration of | Credit: (c) josephsjacobs / stock.adobe.com]
Illustration of equations in shape of brain (stock image).

Credit: (c) josephsjacobs / stock.adobe.com [Illustration of | Credit:
(c) josephsjacobs / stock.adobe.com] Illustration of equations in shape
of brain (stock image).

Credit: (c) josephsjacobs / stock.adobe.com Close The brain has neurons
that fire specifically during certain mathematical operations. This
is shown by a recent study conducted by the Universities of Tu"bingen
and Bonn. The findings indicate that some of the neurons detected are
active exclusively during additions, while others are active during subtractions. They do not care whether the calculation instruction is
written down as a word or a symbol. The results have now been published
in the journal Current Biology.


==========================================================================
Most elementary school children probably already know that three apples
plus two apples add up to five apples. However, what happens in the brain during such calculations is still largely unknown. The current study by
the Universities of Bonn and Tu"bingen now sheds light on this issue.

The researchers benefited from a special feature of the Department
of Epileptology at the University Hospital Bonn. It specializes in
surgical procedures on the brains of people with epilepsy. In some
patients, seizures always originate from the same area of the brain. In
order to precisely localize this defective area, the doctors implant
several electrodes into the patients. The probes can be used to precisely determine the origin of the spasm. In addition, the activity of individual neurons can be measured via the wiring.

Some neurons fire only when summing up Five women and four men
participated in the current study. They had electrodes implanted in the so-called temporal lobe of the brain to record the activity of nerve
cells. Meanwhile, the participants had to perform simple arithmetic
tasks. "We found that different neurons fired during additions than
during subtractions," explains Prof. Florian Mormann from the Department
of Epileptology at the University Hospital Bonn.

It was not the case that some neurons responded only to a "+" sign and
others only to a "-" sign: "Even when we replaced the mathematical symbols
with words, the effect remained the same," explains Esther Kutter, who
is doing her doctorate in Prof. Mormann's research group. "For example,
when subjects were asked to calculate '5 and 3', their addition neurons
sprang back into action; whereas for '7 less 4,' their subtraction
neurons did." This shows that the cells discovered actually encode
a mathematical instruction for action. The brain activity thus showed
with great accuracy what kind of tasks the test subjects were currently calculating: The researchers fed the cells' activity patterns into
a self-learning computer program. At the same time, they told the
software whether the subjects were currently calculating a sum or a
difference. When the algorithm was confronted with new activity data
after this training phase, it was able to accurately identify during
which computational operation it had been recorded.

Prof. Andreas Nieder from the University of Tu"bingen supervised the
study together with Prof. Mormann. "We know from experiments with monkeys
that neurons specific to certain computational rules also exist in
their brains," he says. "In humans, however, there is hardly any data
in this regard." During their analysis, the two working groups came
across an interesting phenomenon: One of the brain regions studied was
the so-called parahippocampal cortex.

There, too, the researchers found nerve cells that fired specifically
during addition or subtraction. However, when summing up, different
addition neurons became alternately active during one and the same
arithmetic task. Figuratively speaking, it is as if the plus key on
the calculator were constantly changing its location. It was the same
with subtraction. Researchers also refer to this as "dynamic coding."
"This study marks an important step towards a better understanding of
one of our most important symbolic abilities, namely calculating with
numbers," stresses Mormann. The two teams from Bonn and Tu"bingen now
want to investigate exactly what role the nerve cells found play in this.

The study was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the
Volkswagen Foundation.

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========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Esther F. Kutter, Jan Bostro"m, Christian E. Elger, Andreas Nieder,
Florian Mormann. Neuronal codes for arithmetic rule
processing in the human brain. Current Biology, 2022; DOI:
10.1016/j.cub.2022.01.054 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220214121241.htm

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