Mathematical Giftedness in the Brain

Humans, other mammals, and birds, all have a well-evolved sense of the numerosity of small sets of objects. However, our brains did not evolve to do mathematics. Instead, our brains learn mathematics at school by coordinating neural interconnectivity. Doing mathematics critically involves: • the lateral frontal cortices to support working memory; • the temporal cortices (and hippocampus) to reconstruct knowledge from long term memory; • the orbitofrontal cortices and the anterior cingulate for decision making, in turn mediated by regions within the limbic sub-cortex; • areas of the fusiform gyri and temporal lobes for sequencing of symbolic