Math On the Mind
In the mid-1800's, Paul
Broca discovered that there were specialized functions for different
regions in the human brain. He identified the third gyrus (the ridges
on the surface of the cerebral cortex) of the prefrontal lobe as the
center for speech production (later referred to as 'Broca's Area').
There is 'domain specificity' in the brain, which creates adaptive
modules with their own exclusive networks that make specific skills or
abilities possible, including the understanding of numbers and
numerical quantities. There are areas of the human brain clearly
devoted to 'number sense,' arithmetic computation and general
mathematics processing. The specific domain for math lies in the lower
(inferior) areas of the left parietal lobe in the posterior convolution
(crevice or valley on the brain's surface) known as the 'angular gyrus.'Regional
brain damage, strokes, demyelination (a reduction in the coating
surrounding an axon, the signal-sending portion of brain cells) or
imprecise development of the neural connections in this 'math area' can
lead to problems with number sense. Learning and remembering numbers,
quantities and their representations will become unusually difficult.
Even animals have a rudimentary sense of number including that helps
them establish comparisons of two quantities to make approximations
concerning quantities of objects in front of them.
Just
as there are individuals whose reading experiences are interrupted by
bouts with dyslexia, they have counterparts in the world of
mathematics, who are afflicted with 'dyscalculia' and 'acalculia,'
which are the mathematical equivalents of dyslexia and color blindness.