一位神童的心算能力由右侧前额叶和颞叶内侧区域维持。

Mental calculation in a prodigy is sustained by right prefrontal and medial temporal areas.

作者信息

Pesenti M, Zago L, Crivello F, Mellet E, Samson D, Duroux B, Seron X, Mazoyer B, Tzourio-Mazoyer N

机构信息

Unité de Neuropsychologie Cognitive, Université Catholique de Louvain, place Mercier 10, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.

出版信息

Nat Neurosci. 2001 Jan;4(1):103-7. doi: 10.1038/82831.

DOI:10.1038/82831

PMID:11135652

Abstract

Calculating prodigies are individuals who are exceptional at quickly and accurately solving complex mental calculations. With positron emission tomography (PET), we investigated the neural bases of the cognitive abilities of an expert calculator and a group of non-experts, contrasting complex mental calculation to memory retrieval of arithmetic facts. We demonstrated that calculation expertise was not due to increased activity of processes that exist in non-experts; rather, the expert and the non-experts used different brain areas for calculation. We found that the expert could switch between short-term effort-requiring storage strategies and highly efficient episodic memory encoding and retrieval, a process that was sustained by right prefrontal and medial temporal areas.

摘要

心算天才是那些在快速准确地解决复杂心算问题方面表现卓越的人。我们使用正电子发射断层扫描（PET）技术，研究了一位专业心算者和一组非专业者认知能力的神经基础，将复杂心算与算术事实的记忆提取进行对比。我们证明，计算专长并非源于非专业者所具备的过程的活动增加；相反，专业者和非专业者在计算时使用了不同的脑区。我们发现，这位专业者能够在需要短期努力的存储策略与高效的情景记忆编码和提取之间进行切换，这一过程由右侧前额叶和内侧颞叶区域维持。