The Emergence of a Brain Network for Numerical Thinking

Educated adults and children engage a network of frontal parietal brain regions for numerical thinking. Recent studies document some prominent changes as this emerges over development, including unilateral right to bilateral shift in number-selective activity, strengthening intra- interhemispheric connections, reduced engagement prefrontal regions, decoupling between regions. Based on these findings, it appears that form an innate or early-emerging basis representing magnitudes, whereas left support the representation culturally acquired symbolic numbers begin emerge childhood. Functional connections hemispheres cortex likely associations magnitudes symbols, they are associated with proficiency. Prefrontal appear provide general cognitive resources associations, engaging correlating positively during learning process disengaging negatively after mastery.