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Conjunction and disjunction in brain areas associated with mathematical operations: Evidence from fMRI meta-analyses
We solve problems with numbers on a daily basis. Although we know that a large set of
brain areas are implicated in mathematical problem solving it remains unclear how
different arithmetic operations are represented in the brain. Using activation likelihood
estimation (ALE) meta-analyses we compare and contrast brain regions associated with
solving problems of addition, subtraction and multiplication. We demonstrate that although
some brain regions are common they are at least separable in terms of spatial extend of
clusters and hemispheric asymmetry. Common regions include the parietal (Brodmann
Area (BA) 7, BA 40), prefrontal (BA 9) and insular cortices, and distinct regions include the
angular gyrus (BA 39), basal ganglia and cerebellum. We propose topographical atlases,
in stereotaxic coordinates, for mathematical processes in healthy adults and discuss
findings with reference to models of mental arithmetic and cognition.