FIG. 3.

Aberrant parietal–frontal response and hyperconnectivity in children with mathematical disability. (A) Brain areas that showed significant main effect of group during problem solving involving addition and subtraction operations in children with mathematical disability (MD), compared to TD children. Signal levels demonstrate that, when activations are compared to a low-level passive fixation condition, arithmetic processing is associated with hyperactivation in the MD group in multiple brain areas including: left lingual gyrus (LG), left fusiform gyrus (FG), right intraparietal sulcus (IPS), right anterior insula, superior frontal gyrus (SFG) bilaterally, and right supplementary motor area (SMA), and right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). (B) Brain areas that showed a significant group (MD, TD) × operation (addition, subtraction) interaction. Compared to TD children, children with MD showed hyperactivation in several posterior brain regions for subtraction (Sub), compared to addition (Add). These regions included bilateral posterior IPS, right anterior IPS, right superior parietal lobe (SPL), left angular gyrus (AG), and left FG. (C) Effective connectivity of the IPS during arithmetic problem solving in the MD (shown in yellow, white in the print version) and TD (shown in red, dark gray in the print version) groups. Note the more extensive connectivity in the MD group. Main effect of group is shown. (D) Brain regions that showed greater IPS connectivity in the MD group included multiple frontal, parietal and occipital regions: bilateral angular gyrus (AG), left supramarginal gyrus (SMG), right middle frontal gyrus (MFG), right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), posteromedial cortex (PMC), and ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC).

Adapted from Rosenberg-lee, M., Ashkenazi, S., Chen, T., Young, C.B., Geary, D.C., Menon, V., 2014. Brain hyper-connectivity and operation-specific deficits during arithmetic problem solving in children with developmental dyscalculia. Dev. Sci. 18, 351–372.